red round of beef surrounded by thirteen carrots. These were dished up
on a plate of blue enamel, and it was from the GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND (as
we called it in the family) that the collection of hairs in question
seemed as it were to spring.

My aunt, I need not say, is rich; and I thought I might be her heir as
well as another. During my month's holiday, she was particularly pleased
with me; made me drink tea with her often (though there was a certain
person in the village with whom on those golden summer evenings I should
have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfields); promised every time
I drank her bohea to do something handsome for me when I went back to
town,--nay, three or four times had me to dinner at three, and to whist
or cribbage afterwards. I did not care for the cards; for though we
always played seven hours on a stretch, and I always lost, my losings
were never more than nineteenpence a night: but there was some infernal
sour black-currant wine, that the old lady always produced at dinner, and
with the tray at ten o'clock, and which I dared not refuse; though upon
my word and honour it made me very unwell.

Well, I thought after all this obsequiousness on my part, and my aunt's
repeated promises, that the old lady would at least make me a present of
a score of guineas (of which she had a power in the drawer); and so
convinced was I that some such present was intended for me, that a young
lady by the name of Miss Mary Smith, with whom I had conversed on the
subject, actually netted me a little green silk purse, which she gave me
(behind Hicks's hayrick, as you turn to the right up Churchyard
Lane)--which she gave me, I say, wrapped up in a bit of silver paper.
There was something in the purse, too, if the truth must be known. First
there was a thick curl of the glossiest blackest hair you ever saw in
your life, and next there was threepence: that is to say, the half of a