told him,' said my aunt, with a nod.

'Shall I--be--given up to him?' I faltered.

'I don't know,' said my aunt. 'We shall see.'

'Oh! I can't think what I shall do,' I exclaimed, 'if I have to go back
to Mr. Murdstone!'

'I don't know anything about it,' said my aunt, shaking her head. 'I
can't say, I am sure. We shall see.'

My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and heavy
of heart. My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of me, put on a
coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the press; washed up the
teacups with her own hands; and, when everything was washed and set in
the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top of the whole,
rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept up the crumbs with a little
broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear
to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged
the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair's breadth already.
When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off
the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner
of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box
to her own table in the open window, and sat down, with the green fan
between her and the light, to work.

'I wish you'd go upstairs,' said my aunt, as she threaded her needle,
'and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I'll be glad to know how he
gets on with his Memorial.'

I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.

'I suppose,' said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed the
needle in threading it, 'you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?'

'I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday,' I confessed.

'You are not to suppose that he hasn't got a longer name, if he chose
to use it,' said my aunt, with a loftier air. 'Babley--Mr. Richard
Babley--that's the gentleman's true name.'

I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the
familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the
full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:

'But don't you call him by it, whatever you do. He can't bear his name.
That's a peculiarity of his. Though I don't know that it's much of a
peculiarity, either; for he has been ill-used enough, by some that bear
it, to have a mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his
name here, and everywhere else, now--if he ever went anywhere else,
whic