--and that is all thy discretion informs me of. There are
cases in which silence implies other things than consent. Wert thou
ashamed or afraid, Darsie, to trust thyself with the praises of the very
pretty grace-sayer?--As I live, thou blushest! Why, do I not know thee
an inveterate squire of dames? and have I not been in thy confidence?
An elegant elbow, displayed when the rest of the figure was muffled in a
cardinal, or a neat well-turned ankle and instep, seen by chance as its
owner tripped up the Old Assembly Close, [Of old this almost deserted
alley formed the most common access betwixt the High Street and the
southern suburbs.] turned thy brain for eight days. Thou wert once
caught if I remember rightly, with a single glance of a single matchless
eye, which, when the fair owner withdrew her veil, proved to be single
in the literal sense of the word. And, besides, were you not another
time enamoured of a voice--a mere voice, that mingled in the psalmody at
the Old Greyfriars' Church--until you discovered the proprietor of that
dulcet organ to be Miss Dolly MacIzzard, who is both 'back and breast',
as our saying goes?

All these things considered, and contrasted with thy artful silence on
the subject of this grace-saying Nereid of thine, I must beg thee to be
more explicit upon that subject in thy next, unless thou wouldst have me
form the conclusion that thou thinkest more of her than thou carest to
talk of.

You will not expect much news from this quarter, as you know the
monotony of my life, and are aware it must at present be devoted to
uninterrupted study. You have said a thousand times that I am only
qualified to make my way by dint of plodding, and therefore plod I must.

My father seems to be more impatient of your absence than he was after
your first departure. He is sensible, I believe, that our solitary meals
want the light which your gay humour was wont to throw over them, and
feels melancholy as men do when the light of the sun is no longer upon
the landscape. If it is thus with him, thou mayst imagine it is much
more so with me, and canst conceive how heartily I wish that thy frolic
were ended, and thou once more our inmate.----

I resume my pen, after a few hours' interval, to say that an incident
has occurred on which you will yourself be building a hundred castles
in the air, and which even I, jealous as I am of such baseless fabrics,
cannot but own affords ground for singular conjecture.

My f