nd weighing
anew, with an anxious appeal to the butcher's arbitration, the relative
advantages of pork and liver. But even her hesitations, and the
intrusion on them of two or three other customers, were of no avail,
for Mr. Ramy was not among those who entered the shop; and at last Ann
Eliza, ashamed of staying longer, reluctantly claimed her steak, and
walked home through the thickening snow.

Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain, and in
the clear light that disappointment turns upon our actions she wondered
how she could have been foolish enough to suppose that, even if Mr. Ramy
DID go to that particular market, he would hit on the same day and hour
as herself.

There followed a colourless week unmarked by farther incident. The old
stocking cured Evelina's throat, and Mrs. Hawkins dropped in once or
twice to talk of her baby's teeth; some new orders for pinking were
received, and Evelina sold a bonnet to the lady with puffed sleeves. The
lady with puffed sleeves--a resident of "the Square," whose name they
had never learned, because she always carried her own parcels home--was
the most distinguished and interesting figure on their horizon. She was
youngish, she was elegant (as the title they had given her implied), and
she had a sweet sad smile about which they had woven many histories; but
even the news of her return to town--it was her first apparition
that year--failed to arouse Ann Eliza's interest. All the small daily
happenings which had once sufficed to fill the hours now appeared to her
in their deadly insignificance; and for the first time in her long years
of drudgery she rebelled at the dullness of her life. With Evelina such
fits of discontent were habitual and openly proclaimed, and Ann Eliza
still excused them as one of the prerogatives of youth. Besides, Evelina
had not been intended by Providence to pine in such a narrow life: in
the original plan of things, she had been meant to marry and have a
baby, to wear silk on Sundays, and take a leading part in a Church
circle. Hitherto opportunity had played her false; and for all her
superior aspirations and carefully crimped hair she had remained as
obscure and unsought as Ann Eliza. But the elder sister, who had long
since accepted her own fate, had never accepted Evelina's. Once a
pleasant young man who taught in Sunday-school had paid the younger
Miss Bunner a few shy visits. That was years since, and he had speedily
vanishe