upon the idea. That it would be policy to attach one of the family to
this chirping old miser, he thought incontestable. On the other hand, he
had a dread of London, and Dahlia was surpassingly fair. He put the case
to Robert, in remembrance of what his wife had spoken, hoping that Robert
would amorously stop his painful efforts to think fast enough for the
occasion. Robert, however, had nothing to say, and seemed willing to let
Dahlia depart. The only opponents to the plan were Mrs. Sumfit, a
kindly, humble relative of the farmer's, widowed out of Sussex, very
loving and fat; the cook to the household, whose waist was dimly
indicated by her apron-string; and, to aid her outcries, the
silently-protesting Master Gammon, an old man with the cast of eye of an
antediluvian lizard, the slowest old man of his time--a sort of foreman
of the farm before Robert had come to take matters in hand, and thrust
both him and his master into the background. Master Gammon remarked
emphatically, once and for all, that "he never had much opinion of
London." As he had never visited London, his opinion was considered the
less weighty, but, as he advanced no further speech, the sins and
backslidings of the metropolis were strongly brought to mind by his
condemnatory utterance. Policy and Dahlia's entreaties at last prevailed
with the farmer, and so the fair girl went up to the great city.

After months of a division that was like the division of her living
veins, and when the comfort of letters was getting cold, Rhoda, having
previously pledged herself to secresy, though she could not guess why it
was commanded, received a miniature portrait of Dahlia, so beautiful that
her envy of London for holding her sister away from her, melted in
gratitude. She had permission to keep the portrait a week; it was
impossible to forbear from showing it to Mrs. Sumfit, who peeped in awe,
and that emotion subsiding, shed tears abundantly. Why it was to be kept
secret, they failed to inquire; the mystery was possibly not without its