rned to do so.

'I wish first, my dear,' remarked the cherub faintly, 'that you'd have
the kindness to sprinkle me with a little milk, for I feel as if I
was--Going.'

In fact, the good little fellow had become alarmingly limp, and his
senses seemed to be rapidly escaping, from the knees upward. Bella
sprinkled him with kisses instead of milk, but gave him a little of that
article to drink; and he gradually revived under her caressing care.

'We'll break it to you gently, dearest Pa,' said Bella.

'My dear,' returned the cherub, looking at them both, 'you broke so much
in the first--Gush, if I may so express myself--that I think I am equal
to a good large breakage now.'

'Mr Wilfer,' said John Rokesmith, excitedly and joyfully, 'Bella takes
me, though I have no fortune, even no present occupation; nothing but
what I can get in the life before us. Bella takes me!'

'Yes, I should rather have inferred, my dear sir,' returned the cherub
feebly, 'that Bella took you, from what I have within these few minutes
remarked.'

'You don't know, Pa,' said Bella, 'how ill I have used him!'

'You don't know, sir,' said Rokesmith, 'what a heart she has!'

'You don't know, Pa,' said Bella, 'what a shocking creature I was
growing, when he saved me from myself!'

'You don't know, sir,' said Rokesmith, 'what a sacrifice she has made
for me!'

'My dear Bella,' replied the cherub, still pathetically scared, 'and my
dear John Rokesmith, if you will allow me so to call you--'

'Yes do, Pa, do!' urged Bella. 'I allow you, and my will is his law.
Isn't it--dear John Rokesmith?'

There was an engaging shyness in Bella, coupled with an engaging
tenderness of love and confidence and pride, in thus first calling him
by name, which made it quite excusable in John Rokesmith to do what he
did. What he did was, once more to give her the appearance of vanishing
as aforesaid.

'I think, my dears,' observed the cherub, 'that if you could make it
convenient to sit one on one side of me, and the other on the other, we
should get on rather more consecutively, and make things rather
plainer. John Rokesmith mentioned, a while ago, that he had no present
occupation.'

'None,' said Rokesmith.

'No, Pa, none,' said Bella.

'From which I argue,' proceeded the cherub, 'that he has left Mr
Boffin?'

'Yes, Pa. And so--'

'Stop a bit, my dear. I wish to lead up to it by degrees. And that Mr
Boffin has not treated him well?'

'Has treated him