had laid a cloth over one end of the centre table, and placed near
the green-shaded sewing lamp two tea-cups, two plates, a sugar-bowl
and a piece of pie. The rest of the room remained in a greenish
shadow which discreetly veiled the outline of an old-fashioned
mahogany bedstead surmounted by a chromo of a young lady in a
night-gown who clung with eloquently-rolling eyes to a crag
described in illuminated letters as the Rock of Ages; and against
the unshaded windows two rocking-chairs and a sewing-machine were
silhouetted on the dusk.

Ann Eliza, her small and habitually anxious face smoothed to
unusual serenity, and the streaks of pale hair on her veined
temples shining glossily beneath the lamp, had seated herself at
the table, and was tying up, with her usual fumbling deliberation,
a knobby object wrapped in paper. Now and then, as she struggled
with the string, which was too short, she fancied she heard the
click of the shop-door, and paused to listen for her sister; then,
as no one came, she straightened her spectacles and entered into
renewed conflict with the parcel. In honour of some event of
obvious importance, she had put on her double-dyed and triple-
turned black silk. Age, while bestowing on this garment a
patine worthy of a Renaissance bronze, had deprived it of
whatever curves the wearer's pre-Raphaelite figure had once been
able to impress on it; but this stiffness of outline gave it an air
of sacerdotal state which seemed to emphasize the importance of the
occasion.

Seen thus, in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace
turned over the collar and fastened by a mosaic brooch, and her
face smoothed into harmony with her apparel, Ann Eliza looked ten