her nine lives, and poor Neddy Bray in his, I do not know how
many.

Then there must be, to please these novel readers, extraordinary
situations, wonderful incidents, perplexing difficulties, overwhelming
disasters, strange providences, and miraculous escapes, together with a
proper assemblage of old castles, ruined tombs, yawning cloisters, grim
vaults, mouldering coffins, unearthly sounds, awful visitations,
spiritual appearances; ghosts in white sheets, with bleeding bosoms:
hobgoblins with saucer eyes, fierce claws, and long tails; and
catastrophes so tremendous as to set the hair on end, and convulse the
whole frame with the delight of tenor, and the tenor of delight.

Such was the food of Miss Squeamish, afterwards Mrs. Mumbles, in her
early days.

And she used to read and read and read till she looked upon the world in
which she had to get her living as no world of hers, but a sort of
common sphere made on purpose for tradespeople, washer-women, and
cart-driving. She revelled in a world of the romances, where everything
was made as it _ought to be_, where the virtuous were always rewarded
and the wicked always punished, where high and noble sentiments met with
the reception they deserved, and disinterestedness was duly appreciated,
where passion and impulse, unmixed with the care of consequences, were
held as the glory of both sexes, and everything that was fair and bright
and beautiful, and free and elegant and good, shone triumphantly to the
glory of the heroes and heroines who figured always so splendidly in
these romantic pages.

But at last all these bright visions were to end. Miss Languish died of
a consumption brought on from lying in bed night and morning to read
novels. And Miss Squeamish, afterwards Mrs. Mumbles, was forced to turn
out into the world to seek her living--into that very world which was so
odious to her. But there was no resource, and so the lady who had been
identified with so many heroines was obliged to set up as a milliner and
dressmaker in the little town of Scrambles.

But the poor young woman soon found out that things were carried on in
this world in a manner radically different from that in which the
romances pictured. She soon found out that mutton was eightpence
halfpenny a pound, and that if she did not look well after her butcher
she would find her pound and a half of mutton chops weighing not quite a
pound and a quarter; that bread was ten-pence a loaf, and that the ba