injured boots in one hand; by the other he shall have hold of my
shirt-frill. Amelia shall be kneeling near him, with her little
hands up; and the picture shall have a grand allegorical title, as
the frontispieces have in the Medulla and the spelling-book."

"I shan't have time to do it here," said Rebecca. 'I'll do it when
--when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and
piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry
they would be to part with her.

"O that you could stay longer, dear Rebecca," said Amelia.

"Why?" answered the other, still more sadly. "That I may be only
the more unhap--unwilling to lose you?" And she turned away her
head. Amelia began to give way to that natural infirmity of tears
which, we have said, was one of the defects of this silly little
thing. George Osborne looked at the two young women with a touched
curiosity; and Joseph Sedley heaved something very like a sigh out
of his big chest, as he cast his eyes down towards his favourite
Hessian boots.

"Let us have some music, Miss Sedley--Amelia," said George, who felt
at that moment an extraordinary, almost irresistible impulse to
seize the above-mentioned young woman in his arms, and to kiss her
in the face of the company; and she looked at him for a moment, and
if I should say that they fell in love with each other at that
single instant of time, I should perhaps be telling an untruth, for
the fact is that these two young people had been bred up by their
parents for this very purpose, and their banns had, as it were, been
read in their respective families any time these ten years. They