girl some eighteen years of age.

"This is Cyril, your father's assistant, Nellie," her mother said.

"You are welcome, Master Cyril. I have been wanting to see you.
Father has been praising you up to the skies so often that I have had
quite a curiosity to see what you could be like."

"Your father is altogether too good, Mistress Nellie, and makes far
more of my poor ability than it deserves."

"And is he going to live with us, mother?" Nellie asked.

"Yes, child; he has accepted your father's offer."

Nellie clapped her hands.

"That is good," she said. "I shall expect you to escort me out
sometimes, Cyril. Father always wants me to go down to the wharf to
look at the ships or to go into the fields; but I want to go
sometimes to see the fashions, and there is no one to take me, for
John Wilkes always goes off to smoke a pipe with some sailor or
other, and the apprentices are stupid and have nothing to say for
themselves; and besides, one can't walk alongside a boy in an
apprentice cap."

"I shall be very happy to, Mistress, when my work is done, though I
fear that I shall make but a poor escort, for indeed I have had no
practice whatever in the esquiring of dames."