written--

"What would he give, your lover true,
Just for one little sight of you?

"J.S."

"J.S.?" said Mrs. Melcombe, in a questioning tone.

"It's Joseph, dear," replied Laura, hanging down her head and smiling.

Joseph was the head plumber who had been employed about the now finished
house, and Mrs. Melcombe's dismay was great when she found that Joseph,
having discovered how the young lady thought he was in love with her,
was actually taking up the part of a lover, she dreaded to think what
might occur in consequence. Joseph was a very clever young workman, of
excellent character, and Laura was intolerably foolish and to the last
degree credulous.

If the young man had been the greatest scamp and villain, but in her own
rank of life, it would have been nothing to compare with this, in the
eyes of Mrs. Melcombe, or indeed in most people's eyes. She turned pale,
and felt that she was a stricken woman.

She was not well educated herself, and she had not been accustomed to
society, but she aspired to better things. The house was just finished,
she had written to Mr. Mortimer to tell him so. She thought of giving a
house-warming; for several of the families round, whose fathers and
mothers had been kept at arms' length by old Madam Melcombe till their
children almost forgot that there was such a person, had now begun