"And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell," said Min, in her soft, low voice, which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in her clear grey eyes--silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her heart. "I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of now--except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the `Christmas Carol,' where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy would die. That affected me equally, I believe; and I could not read it dry-eyed now." "Nor I," lisped Baby Blake, following suit, in order to keep up her reputation for sentimentality; "I would thob my eyth out!" "See," quoted the curate, grandiloquently, "how `one touch of nature makes the whole world kin!'" "For my part," exclaimed Miss Spight, who had taken no share in our conversation since we had dropped personalities, "I don't see the use of people crying over the fabulous woes of a lot of fictitious persons that never existed, when there is such an amount of real grief and misery going on in the world." "That is not brought home to us," said Min, courageously; "but the troubles and trials of the people in fiction are; and I believe that every kind thought which a writer makes throb through our hearts, better enables us to pity the sorrows of actual persons." "Bai-ey Je-ove!" exclaimed Horner, twisting his eye-glass round and making an observation for the first time--the discussion before had been apparently beyond his depth,--"Bai-ey Je-ove! Ju-ust what I was gaw-ing to say! Bai-ey Je-ove, yaas! But Miss Spight is much above human emawtion, you know, and all that sawt of thing, you know-ah!" "Besides," continued Min, not taking any notice of our friend's original remark I was glad to see, "one does not always cry over novels. I'm sure I've laughed more than I've wept over Dickens, and other authors." "Ah!" said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head, "life is too serious for merry-making! It is better to mourn than to rejoice, as I've often heard my poor dear papa say when he was alive." "Nonsense, ma!" pertly said her daughter Seraphine; "you can't believe that. I'm sure I'd rather laugh than cry, any day. And so would you, too, ma, in spite of your seriousness!" "Your mamma is quite right in some respects, my dear," said little Miss Pimpernell. "We should not be always thinking of nothing but merry- making. Don't you recollect those lines of my favourite Herrick?-- "`Time flies away fast! The while we never remember, How soon our life here Grows old with the year, That dies in December.'" "Yes, I do, you cross old thing!" said the seraph, shaking her golden locks and laughing saucily; "and I remember also that your `favourite Herrick' says something else about one's `gathering rose-buds whilst one may.'"