be described, feeling within myself that
desolating truth that my best affections have experienced this night a
stifler!'

'I am sure I don't know what you mean, Mr Swiviller,' said Miss Sophy
with downcast eyes. 'I'm very sorry if--'

'Sorry, Ma'am!' said Dick, 'sorry in the possession of a Cheegs! But I
wish you a very good night, concluding with this slight remark, that
there is a young lady growing up at this present moment for me, who has
not only great personal attractions but great wealth, and who has
requested her next of kin to propose for my hand, which, having a
regard for some members of her family, I have consented to promise.
It's a gratifying circumstance which you'll be glad to hear, that a
young and lovely girl is growing into a woman expressly on my account,
and is now saving up for me. I thought I'd mention it. I have now
merely to apologize for trespassing so long upon your attention. Good
night.'

'There's one good thing springs out of all this,' said Richard
Swiviller to himself when he had reached home and was hanging over the
candle with the extinguisher in his hand, 'which is, that I now go
heart and soul, neck and heels, with Fred in all his scheme about
little Nelly, and right glad he'll be to find me so strong upon it. He
shall know all about that to-morrow, and in the mean time, as it's
rather late, I'll try and get a wink of the balmy.'

'The balmy' came almost as soon as it was courted. In a very few
minutes Mr Swiviller was fast asleep, dreaming that he had married
Nelly Trent and come into the property, and that his first act of power
was to lay waste the market-garden of Mr Cheggs and turn it into a
brick-field.

CHAPTER 9

The child, in her confidence with Mrs Quilp, had but feebly described
the sadness and sorrow of her thoughts, or the heaviness of the cloud
which overhung her home, and cast dark shadows on its hearth. Besides
that it was very difficult to impart to any person not intimately
acquainted with the life she led, an adequate sense of its gloom and
loneliness, a constant fear of in some way committing or injuring the
old man to whom she was so tenderly attached, had restrained her, even
in the midst of her heart's overflowing, and made her timid of allusion
to the main cause of her anxiety and distress.

For, it was not the monotonous days unchequered by variety and
uncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the dark dreary
evenings or the long solita