"My gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Tag-rag, holding up both her hands--"if _that_ don't look like a special interposition of Providence, now"---- "So _I_ thought, Tabby, while Mr. Gammon was telling me!" replied her husband. "Ah, Tag, there are many of 'em, if we were only to be on the look-out for them!" said Mrs. Tag-rag, excitedly. "I _do_ see it all! It's designed by Providence to get them soon together! When once Mr. Titmouse gets sight of Tabby, and gets into her company--eh! Tab, lovey! _you'll_ do the rest, hem!" said Tag-rag, fondly. "La, pa! how you _do_ go on!" simpered Miss Tag-rag. "You must do your part, Tab," said her father--"we'll do ours. He'll bite, you may depend on it, if you manage well!" "What sort of a looking young man is he, dear pa?" inquired Miss Tag-rag, blushing, and her heart fluttering very fast. "Oh, you _must_ have seen him, sweetest"---- "How should I ever notice any one of the lots of young men at the shop, pa?--I don't at all know him." "Well--he's the handsomest, most genteel-looking young fellow I ever came across; he's long been an ornament to my establishment, for his good looks and civil and obliging manners--quite a treasure! You should have seen how he _took_ with the ladies of rank always!"---- "Dear me," interrupted Mrs. Tag-rag, anxiously addressing her daughter, "I hope, Tabby, that Miss Nix will send home your lilac-colored frock by next Sunday!" "If she _don't_, ma, I'll take care she never makes anything more for _me_, that's poz!" replied Miss Tag-rag, earnestly. "We'll call there to-morrow, love, and hurry her on," said her mother; and from that moment until eleven o'clock, when the amiable and interesting trio retired to rest, nothing was talked of but the charming Titmouse, and the good fortune he so richly deserved, and how long the courtship was likely to last. Mrs. Tag-rag, who, for the last month or so, had always remained on her knees before getting into bed, for at least ten minutes, on this eventful evening compressed her prayers, I regret to say, into one minute and a half's time, (as for Tag-rag, a hardened heathen, for all he had taken to hearing Mr. Horror, he always tumbled prayerless into bed, the moment he was undressed;) while, for once in a way, Miss Tag-rag, having taken only five minutes to put her hair into papers, popped into bed directly she had blown the candle out, without saying _any_ prayers--or even thinking of finishing the novel which lay under her pillow, and which she had got on the sly from the circulating library of the late Miss Snooks. For several hours she lay in a delicious revery, imagining herself become Mrs. Tittlebat Titmouse, riding about Clapham in a handsome carriage, going to the play every night; and what would the three Miss Knippses say when they heard of it?--they'd burst. And such a handsome man, too!