Mrs. Tomkins' main hope is in her sister, pretty, second-rate, pert Miss Smith, who, with a dog-collar round her waist, to demonstrate its tenuity, and two long, uncurled curls, vulgarly known as "Follow me, lads!" floating over her fat shoulders, has been kissing strawberries and rose-buds, and selling them at half-a-crown apiece, to such attorneys' clerks and doctors' assistants of weak intellect as inhabit Melford town. On Miss Blessington's other side the Misses Denzil hold sway--daughters of a neighbour baronet, whom for twenty years past Sir Thomas has hated with the hate of hell, because he once beat him in a contest for the county. Belinda Denzil, an elderly young lady, tall and yellow and stately; likest to a dandelion among the flowers of the field; and Priscilla, a beady-eyed, brisk brune, of whom her admirers predicate that she could talk the hind leg off a mule! Mr. Gerard and Mr. De Grey are strolling about together arm in arm; criticising the wares a little and the saleswomen a good deal. They are not particularly fond of one another; but no more was Alexander Selkirk, I dare say, of his next-door neighbour, when he lived in town, if he ever did. All the same, if the said next-door neighbour had happened to land on that most irreligious of desert islands, where the benighted valleys and rocks never heard the sound of the church-going bell, don't you suppose that he would have rushed into his arms? So in this desert island of Melford, St. John and Dick, the only two respectable fellows, as they think, among a savage horde of squireens, march about, hooked on together for mutual defence against the barbarians. "You seem to be driving a thriving trade," remarks St. John, who, after his wanderings, has at length come to anchor at Miss Blessington's stall, addressing Esther, but addressing her diffidently, as one that, after the severe and uncalled-for snubbing he had this morning received, was by no means sure of the reception his civilities might meet with, while three old women and a parson squeeze in beside himself and his friend. "Perhaps you will kindly contribute towards making it more thriving, by buying something;" replies Miss Craven, coolly and drily. "Let me recommend this cigar case to your notice; it is rather ugly, and very dear, but one must not mind trifling drawbacks of that kind on an occasion like the present." "Did you make it?" "Yes; but please don't be so polite as to buy it on that account, as, upon the same grounds, you would have to buy a large proportion of the beautiful works of art before you." So speaking, she turns away from him to another customer, as if glad to be rid of him. "May I ask what the price of this is?" asks Mr. De Grey, leaning with languid familiarity over Miss Smith's counter (everybody is familiar with Miss Smith; that is one of her great charms), and holding up a gorgeously-embroidered smoking cap between his finger and thumb.