We find it difficult, even after so many years,--when the shame of the thing has worn off together with the hairs of our head,--to explain how it was that we allowed her to get, in the first instance, any hold upon us. We did not care a brass farthing for the man who had written from the “Literary Curricle.” His letter to us was an impertinence, and we should have stated as much to Mrs. Brumby had we cared to go into such matter with her. And our first feelings with regard to the lady herself were feelings of dislike,--and almost of contempt even, though we did believe that she had been a writer for the press. We disliked her nose, and her lips, and her bonnet, and the colour of her face. We didn’t want her. Though we were very much younger then than we are now, we had already learned to set our backs up against strong-minded female intruders. As we said before, we rose from our chair with the idea of banishing her, not absolutely uncivilly, but altogether unceremoniously. It never occurred to us during that meeting that she could be of any possible service to us, or that we should ever be of any slightest service to her. Nevertheless she had extracted from us a great many words, and had made a great many observations herself before she left us. When a man speaks a great many words it is impossible that he should remember what they all were. That we told Mrs. Brumby on that occasion that we did not doubt but that we would use the manuscript which she left in our hands, we are quite sure was not true. We never went so near making a promise in our lives,--even when pressed by youth and beauty,--and are quite sure that what we did say to Mrs. Brumby was by no means near akin to this. That we undertook to read the manuscript we think probable, and therein lay our first fault,--the unfortunate slip from which our future troubles sprang, and grew to such terrible dimensions. We cannot now remember how the hated parcel, the abominable roll, came into our hands. We do remember the face and form and figure of the woman as she brought it out of the large reticule which she carried, and we remember also how we put our hands behind us to avoid it, as she presented it to us. We told her flatly that we did not want it, and would not have it;--and yet it came into our hands! We think that it must have been placed close to our elbow, and that, being used to such playthings, we took it up. We know that it was in our hands, and that we did not know how to rid ourselves of it when she began to tell us the story of the lieutenant. We were hard-hearted enough to inform her,--as we have, under perhaps lesser compulsion, informed others since,--that the distress of the man or of the woman should never be accepted as a reason for publishing the works of the writer. She answered us gallantly enough that she had never been weak enough or foolish enough so to think “I base my claim to attention,” she said, “on quite another ground.