"That's not likely, sir." "People do get run over at times, especially in the City, and more especially near-sighted people. There's nothing to laugh at." And rather offended at the manner in which his gloomy suggestion had been received, Mr. Hinchford senior passed through the side door into the passage. Mattie found Harriet at the desk again, picking out several sheets of paper saturated with ink, and arranging them of a row on the fender. "More ink, dear--more ink!" she cried, impetuously; "I've thought of what to say. Don't keep me long without the ink." Mattie replenished her ink-stand, and Harriet dashed into the subject with vigour, slackened after the first few lines, then came to a dead stop, and stared intently at the paper. Mattie went into the shop for fear of disturbing Harriet's train of ideas, remained there an hour attending to customers, and arranging stock, finally went back into the parlour. The desk was closed once more; a heap of torn papers was on the floor. Harriet, with her bonnet and shawl on, and her eyes red with weeping, was pacing up and down the room. "No letter?" asked Mattie. "I can't write a letter, and tell him what a wretch I am," she said, "and if I face him to-night, I shall drop at his feet. Girl," she cried, passionately, "do you think it is so easy to act as I have done, and then avow it?" "I should not be ashamed to own it," was Mattie's calm answer; "I should consider it my duty to tell him." "And I will tell him all. God knows I would not deceive him for the world, Mattie, or leave him in ignorance of the true state of my heart. But I cannot tell him now. I'm afraid!" There was real fear in her looks--an intense excitement, that even alarmed Mattie. She saw, after all, that it was best to keep the secret back for that night. "Then I would go home, Harriet, at once. To-morrow, when you are calmer, you may be able to write the letter." "Yes, yes--to-morrow I will write it. I shall have all day before me, and can tear up as many sheets as I like. I will write it to-morrow, and post it from Camberwell. Mattie, as I'm a living woman, and as I pray to be free from this suspense and torture, I WILL write to him to-morrow!" "One day is not very important," said Mattie, in reply, little dreaming of the difference that day would make. "Delays are dangerous--delays are dangerous"--she had written twenty times in her copy-book, and taken not to heart; and there _was_ danger on its way to those who had put off the truth, and to him for whom they feared it. "Delays are dangerous!" Take it to heart, O reader, and remember it in the hour when you shrink from the truth, as from a hot iron that may sear you. Wise old admonitions of our copy-book times--we might do worse very often than laugh at ye! CHAPTER VIII. A SUDDEN JOURNEY.