the beauty and variety
before her. A pile of papers had been provided, and the housewife [a
pocket-size container for small articles (as thread)--D.L.] which Betty
made her always carry in her pocket furnished wherewithal to make up a
number of bags for the lesser sorts; and she went to work, her troubles
somewhat beguiled by the novel beauties of each delicate creature
she disinterred, but remembering with a pang how, if she could have
described them to Mr. Belamour, he would have discoursed upon the Order
of Nature.

London noises were not the continuous roar of vehicles of the present
day, but there was sound enough to remind the country girl where she
was, and the street cries "Old Clothes!" "Sprats, oh!" "Sweep!" were
heard over the wall, sometimes with tumultuous voices that seemed
to enhance her loneliness, as she sat on the floor, hour after hour,
sifting out the entire shells, and feeling a languid pleasure in joining
the two halves of a bivalve, especially those lovely sunset shells that
have rosy rays diverging from their crimson hinge over their polished
surface, white, or just tinted with the hues of a daffodil sky. She
never clasped a pair together without a little half-uttered ejaculation,
"Oh, bring me and my dear young love thus together again!" And when she
found a couple making a perfect heart, and holding together through all,
she kissed it tenderly in the hope that thus it might be with her and
with him whose hand and whose voice returned on her, calling her his
dearest life!

She durst only quit the shells to eat the dinner which Madge served at
one o'clock--a tolerable meal of slices of cold beef from a cook's-shop,
but seasoned with sour looks and a murmur at ladies' fancies. The
weariness and languor of the former day's exertions made her for the
present disinclined to explore the house, even had she had time, and
when twilight came there could have been little but fragments at the
bottom of the case, though she could see no more to sort them.

And what were these noises around her making her start? Rats! Yes, here
they were, venturing out from all the corners. They knew there had been
food in the room. This was why Madge had those to gaunt, weird-looking
cats in her kitchen! Aurelia went and sat on the step into the court to
be out of their way, but Madge hunted her in that the door might be shut
and barred; and when she returned trembling to the sitting room, she
heard such a scampering an