and we can keep up our spirits until then."

But, despite her assumed good spirits, when she went to see Griffith
out of the front door, she held to his arm with a significantly clinging
touch, and was so silent for a moment that he stooped in the dark to
kiss her, and found her cheek wet with tears.

It quite upset him, too, poor fellow! Dolly crying and daunted was a
state of affairs fraught with anguish to him.

"Why, Dolly!" he exclaimed, tremulously. "Dolly, you are crying!"

And then she did give way, and for a minute or so quite needed the
shelter and rest of his arms. She cared for no other shelter or rest;
he was quite enough for her in her brightest or darkest day,--just
this impecunious young man, whose prospects were so limited, but whose
affection for her was so wholly without limit. She might be daunted,
but she could not remain long uncomforted while her love and trust were
still unchanged. Ah! there was a vast amount of magic in the simple,
silent pressure of the arm within that shabby coat-sleeve.

So, as might be expected, she managed to recover herself before many
minutes, and receive his tender condolences with renewed spirit; and
when she bade him good-night she was almost herself again, and was
laughing, even though her eyelashes were wet.

"No," she said, "we are _not_ going to destruction, Lady Augusta to the
contrary, and the family luck must assert itself some time, since it has
kept itself so long in the background. And in the mean time--well," with
a little parting wave of her hand, "Vagabondia to the rescue!"

CHAPTER VI. ~ "WANTED, A YOUNG PERSON."

THEEE was much diligent searching of the advertising columns of the
daily papers for several weeks after this. Advertisements, in fact,
became the staple literature, and Dolly's zeal in the perusal of them
was only to be equalled by her readiness to snatch at the opportunities
they presented. No weather was too grewsome for her to confront, and no
representation too unpromising for her to be allured by. In the morning
she was at Bayswater calling upon the chilling mother of six (four
of them boys) whose moral nature needed judicious attention, and who
required to be taught the rudiments of French, German, and Latin; in the
afternoon she was at the general post-office applying to Q. Y. Z., who
had the education of two interesting orphans to negotiate for, and who
was naturally desirous of doing it as economically as possible; and at