commercial-widow line, I suppose you will have to put up with, my poor Bob; but no greedy old parent to interfere with the disposal of the money. The widow, or the orphan, if a fifty thousand pounder, is the sort of article for you, dear child. “_November 13._--She brought me my breakfast this morning--(what, is she _she_ already? Alas, poor Rosa!)--and I got her to pour out my tea. I couldn’t detain her long: she was so _very_ busy, she said, and seemed painfully anxious to get away. I made her talk a little. She has a nice low voice,--‘an excellent thing,’ &c.! Now Rosa had a vixenish way of speaking, that always jarred upon me, even when I was deepest down that pit into which the fair barmaid’s admirers cast themselves. She--the Cornish girl--is what people call a genteel young person, with white hands and a slim waist, and a nice way of doing her hair, and putting on her collars and cuffs. Her name is Susan Turner, by the bye; and the children call her Susy. Could anything sound more pastoral? Susy. The name of Rosa was always so painfully suggestive of nigger melodies. Another cool gray afternoon, and another low yellow line across the sky; so I went out for my smoke at the same time as yesterday. She was on the Esplanade with the children. She instructs them in arithmetic, writing, and elementary smatterings of history, geography, and grammar, after dinner, and then brings them out for a walk till tea-time, after which they ‘retire to rest,’ as the novelists have it, not without considerable rebellious scuffling in the passage and on the stairs. That is the order of the day. In the morning, I suspect, she is housemaid, parlour-maid, needlewoman, or anything else that my landlady’s necessities oblige her to be. But she is always equally neat and pretty; and if she were only provided with that trifling little matter of fifty thousand or so in the elegant simplicity of the three per cents, I should be decidedly inclined to fall in love with her. Does one ever fall in love with a fifty-thousand pounder, by the bye? I rather think not. She--Susy--was not quite so shy this afternoon, and we talked a good deal. I offered to lend her some books. I offered to lend Rosa books once, when I was in the lowest depths of spooneyism, and was unhappy about her grammar--those dreadful superfluous ‘whiches,’ and intolerable ‘as hows’!--but Rosa rejected my literature, as dry rubbish that gave her the horrors. I had lent her the ‘Bride of Lammermoor.’ My little Susy won’t turn up that innocent nose of hers at any sentimental story, I’ll be bound. I’ve found an odd volume of Byron, containing ‘Parisina,’ and the ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ and a lot of the ‘To Thirza’ business.