d her
blessed hair in papers.

There was the window shut, and not so much as a candle in it; and though
I hemmed and hawed, and whistled over the garden paling, and sang a song
of which Somebody was very fond, and even threw a pebble at the window,
which hit it exactly at the opening of the lattice,--I woke no one except
a great brute of a house-dog, that yelled, and howled, and bounced so at
me over the rails, that I thought every moment he would have had my nose
between his teeth.

So I was obliged to go off as quickly as might be; and the next morning
Mamma and my sisters made breakfast for me at four, and at five came the
"True Blue" light six-inside post-coach to London, and I got up on the
roof without having seen Mary Smith.

As we passed the house, it _did_ seem as if the window curtain in her
room was drawn aside just a little bit. Certainly the window was open,
and it had been shut the night before: but away went the coach; and the
village, cottage, and the churchyard, and Hicks's hayricks were soon out
of sight.

* * * * *

"My hi, what a pin!" said a stable-boy, who was smoking a cigar, to the
guard, looking at me and putting his finger to his nose.

The fact is, that I had never undressed since my aunt's party; and being
uneasy in mind and having all my clothes to pack up, and thinking of
something else, had quite forgotten Mrs. Hoggarty's brooch, which I had
stuck into my shirt-frill the night before.

CHAPTER II

TELLS HOW THE DIAMOND IS BROUGHT UP TO LONDON, AND PRODUCES WONDERFUL
EFFECTS BOTH IN THE CITY AND AT THE WEST END

The circumstances recorded in this story took place some score of years
ago, when, as the reader may remember, there was a great mania in the
City of London for establishing companies of all sorts; by which many
people made pretty fortunes.

I was at this period, as the truth must be known, thirteenth clerk of
twenty-four young gents who did the immense business of the Independent
West Diddlesex Fire and Life Insurance Company, at their splendid stone
mansion in Cornhill. Mamma had sunk a sum of four hundred pounds in the
purchase of an annuity at this office, which paid her no less than six-
and-thirty pounds a year, when no other company in London would give her
more than twenty-four. The chairman of the directors was the great Mr.
Brough, of the house of Brough and Hoff, Crutched Friars, Turkey
Merchants. It was a new house, but did a tremendous business