not be comfortable and cheery? I am sure"--and here she meant to look
encouraging, her usual simper spreading to a smile--"I am sure Betty and
I would do our best to make you so."

"Goot girls, goot girls!" said Mr. Vanderclump, his eyes fixed all the
while upon the supper-table--he sat down to it. "My goot girls!" said
he, soon after, "you may go down; I do not want you; you need not wait."
The two timid, gentle creatures instantly obeyed. More than an hour
elapsed, and then Mr. Vanderclump's bell rang. The two matronly maidens
were very busily employed in making a new cap. Betty rose at once; but
suddenly recollecting that she had been trying on her new and unfinished
cap, and had then only a small brown cotton skull-cap on her head, she
raised both her hands to her head to be certain of this, and then said,
"Do, Molly, there's a dear! answer the bell; for such a figure as I am,
I could not go before master, no how. See, I have unpicked this old cap
for a little bit of French edging at the back." Molly looked a little
peevish; but _her_ cap was on her head, and up stairs she went. Mr.
Vanderclump was sitting before the fire, puffing lustily from his
eternal pipe. "Take away," he said abruptly, "and put the leetle table
here." He pointed and growled, and the sagacious Molly understood. She
placed the table beside him, and upon it the punch, which he had been
drinking. "Batee, my poor Batee!" said Mr. Vanderclump, who had not yet
noticed that Betty was absent. "It is not Betty, but Molly, sir!"
replied the latter damsel, in a voice of childlike simplicity. "Hah!"
said he, apparently considering for a moment, "Hah! Batee, Mollee, all
the same! Mollee, my poor Mollee, you are a goot girl! Get up to-morrow
morning, my poor Mollee, and put on your best gown, and I will marry
you!" Molly, was, as she afterwards declared, struck all of a heap. She
gaped, and gasped with astonishment; and then a power of words were
rushing and racing up her throat to her tongue's end: a glance at her