"I think so--I hope so. Good-bye, my dear. Tell father where I have gone, if he should look in to-night. Home very early!" She fluttered away, pausing to look in at the window and laugh through at Mattie once more. "Perhaps it was as well she gave Sidney up," Mattie thought; "for she has been happier since, and all her dear bright looks are back again. What a wonderful man this Mr. Darcy must be! How I should like to see my darling's choice--the man that she thinks good enough for her! He must be a very good man, too; for with all her weakness, my Harriet despises deceit in any form, and would only love that which was honourable and true. But, then, why didn't she love Sidney Hinchford more; that's what puzzles me so dreadfully!" She clutched her elbows with her hands, and bent herself into a Mother Bunch-like figure in the seat behind the counter, and went off into dream-land. Strange dream-land, belonging to the border-country of the mists lying between the present and the future. A land of things beyond the present, and yet which could never appertain to any future, map it as she might in the brain that went to work so busily. Figures flitted before her of Harriet and Mr. Darcy--of Sidney Hinchford in his desolation, so strange a contrast to the happiness which he had sought--of herself passing from one to the other and endeavouring to do good and make others happy, the one ambition of this generous little heart. And her sanguine nature wound up the story--if it were a story--with the general happiness of all her characters, just as we finish a story, if we wish to please our readers and win their patronage. Even Mr. Wesden would sink his suspicions in the deep water, and be the grave-faced, but kind-hearted patron again, in that border country wherein her thoughts were wandering. Mr. Hinchford came home early to give her a lesson in backgammon, and was sadly disappointed to find Mattie on full duty in the shop that evening. He wandered about the shop himself for a while, and then went up-stairs early to bed, discontented with his lonely position in society; and his place was taken by Ann Packet, who had got "the creeps," and had a craving for "company." Ann Packet's ankles were very bad again, and it was dull work mourning over their decadence in the kitchen, with no one to pity her condition, or promise to call upon her, when she was carried to "St. Tummas's." Even she went to bed early also; for the customers came in frequently, and kept Mattie's attention employed, and it was scarcely worth while sitting in a draught on the shop steps, for the chance of getting in a word now and then, not to mention the probability of Mr. Wesden turning up, and scolding her for coming into the shop at all, an act he had never allowed in his time. At eight o'clock, Mattie was left alone to superintend business; the supper tray for her and Harriet was left upon the parlour table by Ann Packet; in a few minutes Harriet would be back again.