line company; and, if the truth must be told, the
greatest enjoyment the pair used to have was in these afternoons, when
they read together out of the precious, greasy, marble-covered volumes
that Mrs. Gann was in the habit of fetching from the library. Many and
many a tale had the pair so gone through. I can see them over "Manfrone;
or the One-handed Monk," the room dark, the street silent, the hour ten,
the tall, red, lurid candlewick waggling down, the flame flickering pale
upon Miss Caroline's pale face as she read out, and lighting up honest
Becky's goggling eyes, who sat silent, her work in her lap; she had not
done a stitch of it for an hour. As the trapdoor slowly opens, and the
scowling Alonzo, bending over the sleeping Imoinda, draws his pistol,
cocks it, looks well if the priming be right, places it then to the
sleeper's ear, and--_thunder under-under_--down fall the snuffers! Becky
has had them in her hand for ten minutes, afraid to use them. Up starts
Caroline and flings the book back into mamma's basket. It is only that
lady returned with her daughters from a tea-party, where they have been
enjoying themselves.

For the sentimental, too, as well as the terrible, Miss Caroline and the
cook had a strong predilection, and had wept their poor eyes out over
"Thaddeus of Warsaw" and the "Scottish Chiefs." Fortified by the examples
drawn from those instructive volumes, Becky was firmly convinced that her
young mistress would meet with a great lord some day or other, or be
carried off, like Cinderella, by a brilliant prince, to the mortification
of her elder sisters, whom Becky hated.

When, therefore, a new lodger came, lonely, mysterious, melancholy,
elegant, with the romantic name of George Brandon--when he actually wrote
a letter directed to a lord, and Miss Caroline and Becky together
examined the superscription, Becky's eyes were lighted up with a
preternatural look of wondering wisdom; whereas, after an instant,
Caroline dropped hers, and blushed and said, "Nonsense, Becky!"

"Is it nonsense?" said Becky, grinning, and snapping her fingers with a
triumphant air; "the cards come true; I knew they would. Didn't you have
a king and queen of hearts three deals running? What did you dream about
last Tuesday, tell me that?"

But Miss Caroline never did tell, for just then her sisters came bouncing
down the stairs, and examined the lodger's letter. Caroline, however,
went away musing much upon these points; and