and up stairs she went. Mr.
Vanderclump was sitting before the fire, puffing lustily from his
eternal pipe. "Take away," he said abruptly, "and put the leetle table
here." He pointed and growled, and the sagacious Molly understood. She
placed the table beside him, and upon it the punch, which he had been
drinking. "Batee, my poor Batee!" said Mr. Vanderclump, who had not yet
noticed that Betty was absent. "It is not Betty, but Molly, sir!"
replied the latter damsel, in a voice of childlike simplicity. "Hah!"
said he, apparently considering for a moment, "Hah! Batee, Mollee, all
the same! Mollee, my poor Mollee, you are a goot girl! Get up to-morrow
morning, my poor Mollee, and put on your best gown, and I will marry
you!" Molly, was, as she afterwards declared, struck all of a heap. She
gaped, and gasped with astonishment; and then a power of words were
rushing and racing up her throat to her tongue's end: a glance at her
master stopped their explosion. His hands were in his pockets, his face
towards the fire, his pipe in his mouth. "Yes, sir," she replied, humbly
and distinctly. A few tears trickled down her cheeks, as she curtseyed
low at the door, and disappeared. She knew his ways, she thought within
herself, as she walked very slowly down the stairs, and she
congratulated herself that she had not risked another word in reply.
"And now, Betty," she said, as she entered the kitchen, "I'll put the
finishing stitch to my cap, and go to bed, for master will want nothing
more to-night." She sat down quietly to work, and conversed quietly with
Betty, not disclosing a word of her new prospects, Betty, however,
observed that she took off the trimming with which her new cap had been
already half-adorned. "Why, bless me, Molly!" she cried, "you are not
going to put on that handsome white satin bow, are you?"--"Why, yes! I
think I shall," replied Molly, "for now I look at your cap, with that
there yellow riband upon it, mine seems to me quite old-maidish."

The next morning, Molly got up before her sister, and put on her best
gown and her new cap. The morning was dark and dull, and Betty was
sleepy, and Molly kept the window-curtain and the bed-curtains closely
drawn. Unsuspected, she slipped out of the chamber, her shawl and her
bonnet in her hand.

As the clock struck eight, Molly was standing beside her master before the
rails of the marriage-altar; and, not long after, she burst upon the
astonished eyes of her sister, as