'God Almighty bless you, miss!' she exclaimed, taking Ruth's hand and kissing it 'God Almighty bless you!' The tears were streaming down both their faces. A warm hand pressure, a last grateful look from Blade-o'-Grass, and the sisters parted. 'O, Charley! Charley!' sobbed Ruth, as she clasped his arm, 'I might have been like that!' They walked in silence to their home, and Ruth whispered to her companions not to say anything to their kind guardians of what had taken place. 'It might make them sad,' she said. It was dusk when they went indoors. Rachel went to her room first, and Ruth and Charley lingered in the passage. 'Ruth!' he whispered. She laid her head upon his breast with the confidence and innocence of a child. He stooped and kissed her cheek, still wet with her tears. She clung to him more closely--hid her face in his neck. A wondering happiness took possession of them. ROBERT TRUEFIT ALLOWS HIS FEELINGS TO MASTER HIM. The chance acquaintanceship which had so strangely sprung up seven years ago between Mr. Merrywhistle, Robert Truefit, and Jimmy Virtue had ripened into intimacy, and it was not unusual for the three to meet in the old man's leaving-shop in Stoney-alley. The shop and the stock were, on the whole, less fragrant than on the occasion of Mr. Merrywhistle's first introduction to them. An additional seven years' mouldiness lay heavy on the shelves; but familiarity had rendered the musty vapour less objectionable to the benevolent gentleman. There was no perceptible change of importance in Jimmy Virtue; his skin certainly had got tougher and dryer and yellower, but otherwise he did not seem to be a day older. His eyebrows were as precipitous, and his glass eye as mild, and his fierce eye as fierce, as ever they were. No perceptible change either was to be observed in the articles which filled his shop: the same faded dresses and dirty petticoats were crammed into inconvenient corners; the same crinolines loomed from unlikely places; the same old boots hung from the ceiling; and doubtless the same vanities of vanities were enclosed in the box which served as a resting-place in Jimmy Virtue's parlour.