you might not,
however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you hoped and
prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me up again, and
filled me with new trust and confidence. I was thinking of these things
to-night, dear, when I sat expecting you; and I love the Cricket for
their sake!"

"And so do I," repeated John. "But, Dot! _I_ hope and pray that I might
learn to love you? How you talk! I had learnt that long before I brought
you here, to be the Cricket's little mistress, Dot!"

She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him with an
agitated face, as if she would have told him something. Next moment, she
was down upon her knees before the basket; speaking in a sprightly
voice, and busy with the parcels.

"There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods behind
the cart just now; and though they give more trouble, perhaps, still
they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you
have been delivering, I dare say, as you came along?"

"Oh, yes!" John said. "A good many."

"Why, what's this round box? Heart alive, John, it's a wedding-cake!"

"Leave a woman alone to find out that," said John admiringly. "Now, a
man would never have thought of it! Whereas, it's my belief that if you
was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or
a pickled-salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to
find it out directly. Yes; I called for it at the pastrycook's."

"And it weighs I don't know what--whole hundredweights!" cried Dot,
making a great demonstration of trying to lift it. "Whose is it, John?
Where is it going?"

"Read the writing on the other side," said John.

"Why, John! My Goodness, John!"

"Ah! who'd have thought it?" John returned.

"You never mean to say," pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and shaking
her head at him, "that it's Gruff and Tackleton the toymaker!"

John nodded.

Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent--in
dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips, the while, with all
their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am clear of
that), and looking the good Carrier through and through, in her
abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power
of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the
baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed
into the plural number, inquired