ima Buckle,

"I suppose you and Andrew will marry, and when Mr. Buckle dies you
will have the shop?"

"Me marry the 'prentice!" said Miss Jemima. And I discovered how
little I knew of the shades of "caste" in Oakford.

Jemima used often to take me out when Nurse Bundle was otherwise
engaged, and we were always very good friends. One day, I remember,
she was going to a shop about half way up the High Street, and I
obtained leave to go with her. Mrs. Bundle was busy superintending the
cooking of some special delicacy for her "young gentleman's" dinner,
and Jemima and I set forth on our errand. It was to a tinsmith's shop,
where a bath had been ordered for my accommodation.

Ah! through how many years that steep street, with its clean, sunny
stones, its irregular line of quaint old buildings, and the distant
glimpse of big trees within palings into which it passed at the top,
where the town touched the outskirts of some gentleman's place, has
remained on my mind like a picture! Getting a little vague after a few
years, and then perhaps a little altered, as fancy almost
involuntarily supplied the defects of memory; but still that steep
street, that tinsmith's shop--_the_ features of Oakford!

I have since thought that Jemima must have had some special attraction
to the tinsmith's, her errands there were so many, and took so much
time. This occasion may be divided into three distinct periods. During
the first, I waited in that state of vacant patience whereby one
endures other people's shopping. During the second, I walked round all
the cans, pans, colanders, and graters, and took a fancy to a tin mug.
It was neither so valuable nor so handsome as the silver mug with
dragon handles given me by my Indian godfather, but it was a novelty.
When I looked closer, however, I found that it was marked, in plain
figures, fourpence, which at that time was beyond my means; so I
walked to the door, that I might solace the third period by looking
out into the street. As I looked, there came down the hill a fine,
large, sleek donkey, led by an old man-servant, and having on its back
what is called a Spanish saddle, in which two little girls sat side
by side, the whole party jogging quietly along at a foot's pace in the
sunshine. I may say here that my experience of little girls had been
almost entirely confined to my cousins, and that I was so overwhelmed
and impressed by the loveliness of these two children, and by their
quaint, que