pounds per annum more than I have any prospect of getting. But
you are very kind to take so much interest in it, little woman." "Little
woman" was his pet name for her.

She put her hand up to her forehead and gave the wrinkles a little rub,
as if she would have liked to rub them away.

"No," she said, in distress. "I am very fond of calculating, so it isn't
any trouble to me. I only wish I could calculate until what you want and
what you have got would come out even."

Griffith sighed. He had wished the same thing himself upon several
occasions.

He had one consolation in the midst of his tribulations, however. He had
Dolly's letters, one of which arrived at "the office" every few days.
Certainly they were both faithful correspondents. Tied with blue ribbon
in a certain strong box, lay an immense collection of small envelopes,
all marked with one peculiarity, namely, that the letters inside them
had been at once closely written, and so much too tightly packed that it
seemed a wonder they had ever arrived safely at their destination. They
bore various postmarks, foreign and English, and were of different
tints, but they were all directed in the one small, dashing hand, whose
_t'_s were crossed with an audacious little flourish, and whose capitals
were so prone to run into whimsical little curls. Most of them had been
written when Dolly had sojourned with her charges in Switzerland, and
some of them were merely notes of appointment from Bloomsbury Place; but
each of them held its own magnetic attraction for Griffith, and not one
of them would he have parted with for untold gold. He could count these
small envelopes by the score, but he had never received one in his life
without experiencing a positive throb of delight, which held fresh
pleasure every time.

Most of these letters, too, had stories of their own. Some had come when
he had been discouraged and down at heart, and they had been so full of
sunshine, and pretty, loving conceits, that by the time he had finished
reading them he had been positively jubilant; some, I regret to say,
were a trifle wilful and coquettish, and had so roused him to jealous
fancies that he had instantly dashed off a page or so of insane reproach
and distrust which had been the beginning of a lover's quarrel; some
of them (always written after he had been specially miserable and
unreasoning) were half-pathetic mixtures of reproach and appeal, full of
small dashes of high indignation,