‘I’ll give you what I give my present housekeeper,’ answered Lucius, ‘and you must manage to rub on upon it till my prospects improve. I think you’ll be able to make my house comfortable—eh, Mrs. Wincher?—and to get on with its new mistress, when I am happy enough to bring my wife home.’ ‘Lor, sir, I can do for you better than I did for Mr. Sivewright, who’s a deal more troublesomer than ever you could be, even if you tried to give trouble; and as to Miss Lucille, why, she knows I’d wear the flesh off my bones to serve her, willing.’ It was all settled satisfactorily. Lucius was to give his housekeeper a week’s notice, as per agreement. She had burnt his chop and smoked his tea continually of late, despite his remonstrances. And Mr. and Mrs. Wincher were to take up their abode with him as soon as he returned from his foreign expedition. They parted on excellent terms with each other. CHAPTER XX. LUCILLE MAKES A NEW FRIEND. The sun shone on the lovers’ journey. It was almost the happiest day in the lives of either; certainly the happiest day these two had ever spent together. To Lucille, after perpetual imprisonment in the Shadrack-road, those green fields and autumnal woods seemed unutterably beautiful—the winding river—the changing shadows on the hill-side—the villages nestling in verdant hollows. ‘How can any one live in London!’ she exclaimed, with natural wonder, the only London she knew being so dreary and dingy a scene. The judicious administration of half-a-crown on Lucius’s part had procured the lovers a compartment to themselves. He was anxious to ask those questions which he had meant to ask last night, when the conversation had taken so unexpected a turn. ‘Lucille,’ he began, plunging at once to the heart of his subject, ‘I want you to grant that request I made last night. I am not going to speak of Ferdinand Sivewright; put him out of your thoughts altogether, as some one who has no further influence upon your fate. I want you to tell me your first impressions of life, before you went to Bond-street. Forgive me, dearest, if I ask you to recall memories that may pain you. I have a strong reason for wishing you to answer me.’ ‘You might tell me the reason, Lucius.’ ‘I will tell you some day.’ ‘I suppose I must be content with that,’ she said; and then went on thoughtfully, ‘My first memories, my first impressions? I think my first recollection is of the sea.’ ‘You lived within sight of the sea, then?’ ‘Yes. I can just remember—almost as faintly as if it were a dream—being lifted up in my nurse’s arms, in an orchard on a hill, to look at the sea. There it lay before us, wide and blue and bright. I wanted to fly to it.’ ‘Can you remember your nurse?’ ‘I know she wore a high white cap and no bonnet, and spoke a language that I never heard after I came to Bond-street—a language with a curious twang. I daresay it was some French _patois_.’ ‘Very likely. And your mother, Lucille? Have you no recollection of her?’