Still, what woman could do, she did, for she firmly resisted everything, till an unlucky remnant of magpie-coloured ribbon, the “very thing she should want when she changed her mourning, and which she _knew_ she could never meet with again,” a ribbon so cheap that the shopman declared he was “giving it away,” at the very moment when he was adding two shillings to the bill on the strength of it; though this reductive ribbon beguiled her, the little concession only proved that she was not above humanity. With which fact we are well contented, because, enjoying but a very distant and limited acquaintance with such higher circles as she would otherwise have mixed in, we might never have heard of her existence, That she possessed some power of self-denial she proved, by paying her bill and quitting the shop the moment that ribbon had conquered her; the next best thing to resisting temptation being to fly from it. “Why, Caroline dear, we must have been an age in that shop, it is nearly five o’clock! What can have become of your father’s carriage?” exclaimed Emily, glancing in dismay at the hands of the old church clock, which pointed to a quarter to five. “Really I can’t conceive,” was the reply: “something must have occurred to delay it, I suppose; it will be growing dusk before we can get home if we have to walk by the road, and we can scarcely attempt the fields so late by ourselves.” “Mamma will be so frightened,” suggested Emily, “if it gets at all dark before we return--had we not better start at once, and walk on till the carriage overtakes us?” Caroline agreed to this plan, merely proposing the emendation that they should leave word they had done so, and that the groom, if he ever appeared, was to follow and endeavour to overtake them. For this purpose they re-entered the linen-draper’s shop, where, while they paused for a moment to deliver the message, that vindictive shopman actually was scoundrel enough to display at arm’s length a flimsy black scarf (_barege_ we believe the villain called it), which, down to the very pattern itself (opaque spots of the same material, representing apparently a turnip with a cocked hat on, though we can scarcely bring ourselves to believe the draughtsman could seriously have thus planned the design), Emily had dreamed of only the night before: such is the heartlessness of men--at least of shopmen.