For a minute Priscilla stands still, rebuffed; but recovering herself, speedily rushes off again, charges with her fender-stool an old maid who has one already, and a poor little whity-brown curate who has no house to put one in, &c., &c. "I am afraid I have not done them up very neatly," Esther is saying, as she gives a parcel into Mr. De Grey's hands--Miss Smith having at length frightened that gentleman from her side by the rapid strides to intimacy which she was making with him--"My fingers toil in vain after the nimbleness with which shopmen whisk a parcel into shape and compactness before you have time to look round." Mr. De Grey has spent a small fortune in pincushions, kettle-holders, dressed dolls, and many other such-like articles which no young man of fashion should be without. "What have I done to be so neglected, Miss Craven?" asks Gerard, elevating his eyebrows plaintively. "Am I expected to put on these slippers on the spot, that I am given no paper to pack them up in?" "Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought that Miss De Grey was attending to you," answers Esther, in the most business-like, shop-woman voice, without smiling, or lifting her eyes. "I thought no one ever gave change at a bazaar," he says, trying to make her look up at him, as she puts a few shillings into his hand. "I do not approve of such extortion," she answers, demurely; "honesty is the best policy." "That proverb must have been invented, as Whately justly observed, by some one who had tried the other alternative." She smiles a little against her will. "I wish you two would go now," she says, addressing both young men indifferently: "you are only making me idle. Look! there are three old maids ready to storm the position, and only deterred by you." "Rhadamantha, Hebe, and Niobe!" says St. John, laughing. "Please go; I know you are not thinking of buying anything more." "Don Ferdinando can do no more than he can do, and at present he is pretty well cleaned out." At Miss Blessington's stall trade is certainly very brisk; it is considered a fitting mark of respect to the family to buy their goods, and so the honest burgesses of Melford make it a point of honour to buy Miss Blessington's and Miss De Grey's blotting books and babies' socks in preference to anyone else's, however superior in fabric and less exorbitant in price anybody else's might be. Miss Blessington has just sunk upon a chair, with an affectation of great fatigue, and is saying languidly, "If ever any one deserved the martyr's crown, that person is _I;_ within the last ten minutes I have sold nine cushions and fifteen pairs of muffetees." "There's plenty of cool tea and warm ices at the other end of the room, if you think they are likely to restore you," suggests Gerard, who is still leaning his elbow on the counter, and has not gone away as commanded.