on with an overworked and sickly old
mother (once as pretty as yourself, Mell) and an ill-favored,
ill-mannered and illiterate old father?

Is that what Mell intends to get out of?

Yes, and she means to do it in the easiest possible way, according
to her own conception of the matter. Other girls may find it
necessary to work their way, by a long and tedious process, out of
disagreeable surroundings, but she will do it with one brilliant
master-stroke--_coute qu'il coute_.

Put a placard on pretty Mell; proclaim her in the market place; hawk
the news upon the street corners; inscribe it on the pages of the
great Book up yonder!

To unite her destinies with some being--not divinely, blessing and
being blessed--not vitally, loving and being loved; not necessarily a
being affectionately responsive and, therefore, fitted to become the
sharer of her joy and the assuager of her grief, but simply some being
of masculine endowment serving in the capacity of a latch-key, through
whose instrumentality she can gain admission into the higher worldly
courts, for whose untasted delights her whole nature panted, is
henceforth, until accomplished, the end and aim of Mellville Creecy's
existence.

Ho, there! all ye buyers, come this way!

Here's a woman for sale!

CHAPTER II.

A MOTE IN THE EYE.

In Pompeii, eighteen hundred years ago, people--a good many people,
were dreadfully afraid of dogs; so much so that many of the
householders in that famous old city put _Cave Canem_ on their
front-door-sills, as a friendly piece of advice to all comers-in and
goers-out. Just how their feelings were affected towards the domestic
cow, we are left to conjecture; but now, after eighteen hundred years,
and in less famous localities, people--a good many people--are still
afraid of dogs, and without a nice sense of discernment in their
fears, include cows, putting the two together as beasts that want
"discourse of reason."

Now, this is unrighteous judgment; for even a cow should be looked at
fairly, even if she does show the cloven hoof. There are cows and
cows, as well as men and men. Suke, the young Jersey, would not toss
her horns at a butterfly, much less hurt a baby. She was sagacity
itself, and granting she did not know the buttered side of bread,
which is likely, she did know, to a moral certainty, where she got her
grass and how.

Early the next morn, Suke began to low, and hoping to be heard by
virtue of insistence, kept i