ntelligent youngster, Mr. Heale, d'ye see,
to my mind; and you can't do better than accept his offer; for you'll
find him a great help, especially among the ladies, d'ye see. They
like a good-looking chap, eh, Mrs. Jones?"

On the fourth day, by good fortune, what should come ashore but
Tom's own chest--moneyless, alas! but with many useful matters still
unspoilt by salt water. So, all went well, and indeed somewhat too
well (if Tom would have let it), in the case of Miss Anna Maria Heale,
the Doctor's daughter.

She was just such a girl as her father's daughter was likely to be; a
short, stout, rosy, pretty body of twenty, with loose red lips, thwart
black eyebrows, and right naughty eyes under them; of which Tom took
good heed: for Miss Heale was exceedingly inclined, he saw, to make
use of them in his behoof. Let others who have experience in, and
taste for such matters, declare how she set her cap at the dapper
young surgeon; how she rushed into the shop with sweet _abandon_ ten
times a-day, to find her father; and, not finding him, giggled, and
blushed, and shook her shoulders, and retired, to peep at Tom through
the glass door which led into the parlour; how she discovered that
the muslin curtain of the said door would get out of order every ten
minutes; and at last called Mr. Thurnall to assist her in rearranging
it; how, bolder grown, she came into the shop to help herself to
various matters, inquiring tenderly for Tom's health, and giggling
vulgar sentiments about "absent friends, and hearts left behind;" in
the hope of fishing out whether Tom had a sweetheart or not. How, at
last, she was minded to confide her own health to Tom, and to instal
him as her private physician; yea, and would have made him feel her
pulse on the spot, had he not luckily found some assafoetida, and
therewith so perfumed the shop, that her "nerves" (of which she was
always talking, though she had nerves only in the sense wherein a
sirloin of beef has them) forced her to beat a retreat.

But she returned again to the charge next day, and rushed bravely
through that fearful smell, cleaver in hand, as the carrier set down
at the door a huge box, carriage-paid, all the way from London, and
directed to Thomas Thurnall, Esquire. She would help to open it: and
so she did, while old Heale and his wife stood by curious,--he with a
maudlin wonder and awe (for he regarded Tom already as an altogether
awful and incomprehensible "party"), and Mr