a plated egg-stand. When the lady's-maid
took a walk in the course of the afternoon, she found she had occasion
for eight cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's
cipher), half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk
stockings, and a gold-headed scent-bottle. "Both the new cashmeres is
gone," said she, "and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's trinket-box
but a paper of pins and an old coral bracelet." As for the page, he
rushed incontinently to his master's dressing-room and examined every
one of the pockets of his clothes; made a parcel of some of them, and
opened all the drawers which Walker had not locked before his departure.
He only found three-halfpence and a bill stamp, and about forty-five
tradesmen's accounts, neatly labelled and tied up with red tape.
These three worthies, a groom who was a great admirer of Trimmer the
lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend of the cook's, sat down to a
comfortable dinner at the usual hour, and it was agreed among them all
that Walker's ruin was certain. The cook made the policeman a present of
a china punch-bowl which Mrs. Walker had given her; and the lady's-maid
gave her friend the "Book of Beauty" for last year, and the third volume
of Byron's poems from the drawing-room table.

"I'm dash'd if she ain't taken the little French clock, too," said the
page, and so indeed Mrs. Walker had; it slipped in the basket where
it lay enveloped in one of her shawls, and then struck madly and
unnaturally a great number of times, as Morgiana was lifting her store
of treasures out of the hackney-coach. The coachman wagged his head
sadly as he saw her walking as quick as she could under her heavy load,
and disappearing round the corner of the street at which Mr. Balls's
celebrated jewellery establishment is situated. It is a grand shop, with
magnificent silver cups and salvers, rare gold-headed canes, flutes,
watches, diamond brooches, and a few fine specimens of the old masters
in the window, and under the words--

BALLS, JEWELLER,

you read

Money Lent.

in the very smallest type, on the door.

The interview with Mr. Balls need not be described; but it must have
been a satisfactory one, for at the end of half an hour Morgiana
returned and bounded into the coach with sparkling eyes, and told the
driver to GALLOP to Cursitor Street; which, smiling, he promised to do,
and accordingly set off in that direction at the rate of four miles an