ascertain who she was. I strove--yes, I can honestly say, strove to
repress the desire. I tried to laugh it off, as idle and ridiculous;
to think of my sister, of the book I was writing, of anything but the
one subject that pressed stronger and stronger on me, the harder I
struggled against it. The spell of the syren was over me. I went out,
hypocritically persuading myself, that I was only animated by a
capricious curiosity to know the girl's name, which once satisfied,
would leave me at rest on the matter, and free to laugh at my own
idleness and folly as soon as I got home again.

I arrived at the house. The blinds were all drawn down over the front
windows, to keep out the sun. The little slip of garden was left
solitary--baking and cracking in the heat. The square was silent;
desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be. I walked up and
down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I
quitted the place. While still undecided how to act, a shrill
whistling--sounding doubly shrill in the silence around--made me look
up.

A tradesman's boy--one of those town Pucks of the highway; one of
those incarnations of precocious cunning, inveterate mischief, and
impudent humour, which great cities only can produce--was approaching
me with his empty tray under his arm. I called to him to come and
speak to me. He evidently belonged to the neighbourhood, and might be
made of some use.

His first answer to my inquiries, showed that his master served the
household at North Villa. A present of a shilling secured his
attention at once to the few questions of any importance which I
desired to put to him. I learned from his replies, that the name of