say a word."

"True," replied Mowbray, "but your little expenses--your charities--your
halt and blind--your round of paupers?"

"Well, I can manage all that too. Look you here, John, how many
half-worked trifles there are. The needle or the pencil is the resource
of all distressed heroines, you know; and I promise you, though I have
been a little idle and unsettled of late, yet, when I do set about it,
no Emmeline or Ethelinde of them all ever sent such loads of trumpery to
market as I shall, or made such wealth as I will do. I dare say Lady
Penelope, and all the gentry at the Well, will purchase, and will
raffle, and do all sort of things to encourage the pensive performer. I
will send them such lots of landscapes with sap-green trees, and
mazareen-blue rivers, and portraits that will terrify the originals
themselves--and handkerchiefs and turbans, with needlework scallopped
exactly like the walks on the Belvidere--Why, I shall become a little
fortune in the first season."

"No, Clara," said John, gravely, for a virtuous resolution had gained
the upperhand in his bosom, while his sister ran on in this manner,--"We
will do something better than all this. If this kind help of yours does
not fetch me through, I am determined I will cut the whole concern. It
is but standing a laugh or two, and hearing a gay fellow say, D---- me,
Jack, are you turned clodhopper at last?--that is the worst. Dogs,
horses, and all, shall go to the hammer; we will keep nothing but your
pony, and I will trust to a pair of excellent legs. There is enough left
of the old acres to keep us in the way you like best, and that I will
learn to like. I will work in the garden, and work in the forest, mark
my own trees, and cut them myself, keep my own accounts, and send
Saunders Meiklewham to the devil."

"That last is the best resolution of all, John," said Clara; "and if
such a day should come round, I should be the happiest of living
creatures--I should not have a grief left in the world--if I had, you
should never see or hear of it--it should lie here," she said, pressing
her hand on her bosom, "buried as deep as a funereal urn in a cold
sepulchre. Oh! could we not begin such a life to-morrow? If it is
absolutely necessary that this trifle of money should be got rid of
first, throw it into the river, and think you have lost it amongst
gamblers and horse-jockeys."

Clara's eyes, which she fondly fixed on her brother's face, glowed
through the t