Miss Augusta Manby had been a workwoman at Madame Clarisse's; but she had long left that patrician establishment, and started on her own account. The name of her late employer figured under her own on the brass plate which adorned her door; and this recommendation, and her own talent in reducing bulging waists, and "fitting" generally obstinate figures, had procured for her a vast amount of patronage in the clerk-inhabited district where she had pitched her tent. In the fulness of delight at her success, Miss Manby had taken advantage of the occasion of her birthday to summon her friends to rejoice with her at a little festive gathering, and the advent of those friends she was then awaiting. "I think it will all do very well," she said to herself, after surveying the preparations; "and I am sure it ought to go off nicely. I should have been afraid to ask Fanny Stafford if Bella Merton and her brother had not been coming; but she has quite West End manners, and he is very nice-looking and very well-behaved. It's a pity I could not avoid asking Gus; but he would have been sure to have heard of it; and then, if he had been left out, there would have been a pretty to-do." A ring at the bell stopped Miss Manby's soliloquy, and she rushed to the glass to "put herself tidy," as she phrased it. There was no need for this performance in Miss Manby's case, as the glass reflected a pretty little face of the snub-nose, black-eyes, white-teeth, and oiled-hair order, and a very pretty little figure, which the owner took care should be well, though not expensively, got up. The arrivals were Miss Bella Merton--a young lady who officiated as clerk at Mr. Kammerer's, the photographer's in Regent Street, kept the appointment ledger, entered the number of copies ordered, and received the money from the sitters--and her brother, a book-keeper in Repp and Rumfitt's drapery establishment. "So good of you, Bella dear, to be the first!" said Miss Manby, welcoming a tall dashing-looking young woman, who darted into the room after the half-cleansed servant had broken down in announcing "Miss Merting."--"And you too, Mr. John; I scarcely thought you would have taken the trouble to come from the West End to this outlandish place." Mr. John, as she called him, who was a tall well-built young man, dressed in a black frock coat, waistcoat, and trousers, relieved by an alarmingly vivid-blue necktie, merely bowed his acknowledgments; but his sister, who had thrown off a coquettish little black-silk cloak, and what was known amongst her friends as a "duck of a bonnet," and who was then smoothing her hair before the one-foot-square looking-glass over the chimney-piece, said: "My dear Augusta, what nonsense it is! we should be thankful to escape from that hot dusty town to this--well, really, this rural retreat. And as for coming early, there's nothing doing now at the West, so that one can leave when one likes."