e a happy day of it.'

Mrs Varden immediately closed the Manual, and bursting into tears,
requested to be led upstairs.

'What is the matter now, Martha?' inquired the locksmith.

To which Martha rejoined, 'Oh! don't speak to me,' and protested in
agony that if anybody had told her so, she wouldn't have believed it.

'But, Martha,' said Gabriel, putting himself in the way as she was
moving off with the aid of Dolly's shoulder, 'wouldn't have believed
what? Tell me what's wrong now. Do tell me. Upon my soul I don't know.
Do you know, child? Damme!' cried the locksmith, plucking at his wig in
a kind of frenzy, 'nobody does know, I verily believe, but Miggs!'

'Miggs,' said Mrs Varden faintly, and with symptoms of approaching
incoherence, 'is attached to me, and that is sufficient to draw down
hatred upon her in this house. She is a comfort to me, whatever she may
be to others.'

'She's no comfort to me,' cried Gabriel, made bold by despair. 'She's
the misery of my life. She's all the plagues of Egypt in one.'

'She's considered so, I have no doubt,' said Mrs Varden. 'I was prepared
for that; it's natural; it's of a piece with the rest. When you taunt
me as you do to my face, how can I wonder that you taunt her behind her
back!' And here the incoherence coming on very strong, Mrs Varden wept,
and laughed, and sobbed, and shivered, and hiccoughed, and choked; and
said she knew it was very foolish but she couldn't help it; and that
when she was dead and gone, perhaps they would be sorry for it--which
really under the circumstances did not appear quite so probable as she
seemed to think--with a great deal more to the same effect. In a word,
she passed with great decency through all the ceremonies incidental to
such occasions; and being supported upstairs, was deposited in a highly
spasmodic state on her own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards
flung herself upon the body.

The philosophy of all this was, that Mrs Varden wanted to go to
Chigwell; that she did not want to make any concession or explanation;
that she would only go on being implored and entreated so to do; and
that she would accept no other terms. Accordingly, after a vast amount
of moaning and crying upstairs, and much damping of foreheads, and
vinegaring of temples, and hartshorning of noses, and so forth;
and after most pathetic adjurations from Miggs, assisted by warm
brandy-and-water not over-weak, and divers other cordials, also of
a stimulatin