nary

Luke Honeythunder A self-styled "philanthropist" and
bore. Guardian of Neville and Helena

Lieutenant Tartar A retired naval officer

"Dick Datchery" A detective

Durdles A stone-mason and chiseler of tombstones

"The Deputy" A street Arab

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

I

JOHN JASPER

In the quiet town of Cloisterham, in England, in a boarding-school, once
lived a beautiful girl named Rosa Bud--an amiable, wilful, winning,
whimsical little creature whom every one called Rosebud. She was an
orphan. Her mother had been drowned when she was only seven years old
and her father had died of grief on the first anniversary of that day.

Her father's friend and college mate, a Mr. Drood, had comforted his
last hours, and they had agreed between them that when Rosebud was old
enough she should marry Mr. Drood's son Edwin, then a little boy. Her
father put this wish in his will, as did Mr. Drood, who died also soon
after his friend, and so Rosebud and Edwin Drood grew up knowing that,
though not bound in any way, each was intended for the other. So it came
about that, while if they had been let alone they might have fallen in
love naturally, yet as it was they were always shy and ill at ease with
one another. Yet they liked each other, too.

Rosebud's guardian was a Mr. Grewgious, an arid, sandy man who looked
as if he might be put in a grinding-mill and turned out first-class
snuff. He had scanty hair like a yellow fur tippet, and deep notches in
his forehead, and was very near-sighted. He seemed to have been born
old, so that when he came to London to call on Rosebud amid all the
school-girls he used to say he felt like a bear with the cramp.
Grewgious, however, under his oddity had a very tender heart,
particularly for Rosebud, whose mother he had been secretly in love with
before she married. But he had grown up a dry old bachelor, living in
gloomy rooms in London, and no one would have guessed him ever to have
been a bit romantic.

The school Rosebud attended was called Nun's House. Miss Twinkleton, the
prim old maid who managed it, termed it a "Seminary for Young Ladies."
It had a worn front, with a shining brass door-plate that made it look
at a distance like a battered old beau with a big new eye-glass stuck in
his blind eye. Here Roseb