nds to keep decently going,
even were she to marry a man who would take a kindly view of her peculiar
situation, and afford her opportunities of strengthening her powers for
her kindred's good. But what would be the result if, eighteen months
hence--the date at which her occupation of the house in Exonbury Crescent
came to an end--she were still a widow, with no accumulated capital, her
platform talents grown homely and stunted through narrow living, and her
tender vein of poesy completely dispersed by it? To calmly relinquish
the struggle at that point would have been the act of a stoic, but not of
a woman, particularly when she considered the children, the hopes of her
mother for them, and her own condition--though this was least--under the
ironical cheers which would greet a slip back into the mire.

It here becomes necessary to turn for a moment to Master Joey Chickerel,
Ethelberta's troublesome page and brother. The face of this juvenile was
that of a Graeco-Roman satyr to the furthest degree of completeness.
Viewed in front, the outer line of his upper lip rose in a double arch
nearly to his little round nostrils, giving an expression of a jollity so
delicious to himself as to compel a perpetual drawing in of his breath.
During half-laughs his lips parted in the middle, and remained closed at
the corners, which were small round pits like his nostrils, the same form
being repeated as dimples a little further back upon his cheek. The
opening for each eye formed a sparkling crescent, both upper and under
lid having the convexity upwards.

But during some few days preceding the dinner-party at the Doncastles'
all this changed. The luxuriant curves departed, a compressed lineality
was to be observed everywhere, the pupils of his eyes seemed flattened,
and the carriage of his head was limp and sideways. This was a feature
so remarkable and new in him that Picotee noticed it, and was lifted from
the melancholy current of her own affairs in contemplating his.

'Well, what's the matter?' said Picotee.

'O--nothing,' said Joey.

'Nothing? How can you say so?'

'The world's a holler mockery--that's what I say.'

'Yes, so it is, to some; but not to you,' said Picotee, sighing.

'Don't talk argument, Picotee. I only hope you'll never feel what I feel
now. If it wasn't for my juties here I know what I'd do; I'd 'list,
that's what I'd do. But having my position to fill here as the only
responsible man-servant i