about it. I couldn't give
her up for a hundred gold guineas--not for a deal more than that."

He knew Susan's letters off by heart, and did not need his spectacles,
nor a good light to read them by. Charlotte listened with emphatic nods,
and many exclamations of astonishment.

"That's very pretty of Susan," she remarked, "saying as Aunt Charlotte'll
do her sewing, and see to her manners. Ay, that I will! for who should
know manners better than me, who used to work for the Staniers, and dine
at the housekeeper's table, with the butler and all the head servants? to
be sure I'll take care that she does not grow up ungenteel. Where is the
dear child, brother James?"

"She's gone out for a walk this fine morning," he answered.

"Not alone?" cried Charlotte. "Who's gone out with her? A child under
five years old could never go out all alone in London: at least I should
think not. She might get run over and killed a score of times."

"Oh! there's a person with her I've every confidence in," replied Oliver.

"What sort of person; man or woman; male or female?" inquired Charlotte.

"A boy," he answered, in some confusion.

"A boy!" repeated his sister, as if he had said a monster. "What boy?"

"His name's Tony," he replied.

"But where does he come from? Is he respectable?" she pursued, fixing
him with her glittering eyes in a manner which did not tend to restore
his composure.

"I don't know, sister," he said in a feeble tone.

"Don't know, brother James!" she exclaimed. "Don't you know where
he lives?"

"He lives here," stammered old Oliver; "at least he sleeps here under the
counter; but he finds his own food about the streets."

Charlotte's consternation was past all powers of speech. Here was her
brother, a respectable man, who had seen better days, and whose sister
had been a dressmaker in good families, harbouring in his own house a
common boy off the streets, who, no doubt, was a thief and pickpocket,
with all sorts of low ways and bad language. At the same time there was
poor Susan's little girl dwelling under the same roof; the child whose
pretty manners she was to attend to, living in constant companionship
with a vulgar and vicious boy! What she might have said upon recovering
her speech, neither she nor Oliver ever knew; for at this crisis Tony
himself appeared, carrying Dolly and his new broom in his arms, and
looking very haggard and tattered himself, his bare feet black with mud,
and his bare head