Ellen, a comely but not pretty girl, about seventeen, whose black eyes and hair were her chief attractions, sat there in a purple bombazine dress, with her sheathed scissors and College pincushion suspended by a chain from her girdle, plying her needle most industriously. He was not accustomed to parlours, and no doubt his bow was as awkward as his blush; but he had a message to deliver, and he did that in a business like manner. He had to wait until pattern after pattern was tried against the chintz, and calculations made. Mrs. Chadwick, seeing his eyes wander wistfully from picture to picture, courteously gave him permission to examine them. At once Ellen, who was sitting close under one, rose to act as interpreter. She was recalled by the mild voice of her mother. “Sit down, Ellen; Jabez Clegg does not require a young lady’s help to understand those pictures—they explain themselves.” Ellen went back to her seat and her sewing with a raised colour, and a private impression that the rebuke was uncalled for, though she spoke never a word. Perhaps Mrs. Chadwick thought condescension should have its limits, and did not believe in a young lady’s impulsive civility to an apprentice Blue-coat boy. Yet that was not like Mrs. Chadwick. Miss Augusta had been staying with her aunt. Part of his commission was to convoy her home; she was an only child, and too precious to be trusted out alone, though she was in her eleventh year, and the distance was nothing. But so many desperadoes had been let loose by the termination of the war that crime and violence were rampant, footpads infested highways and byways, and Cicily, Augusta’s maid—ex-nurse—was no longer deemed a protection. He stood before the last engraving when Augusta—in no awe of her father’s apprentice—came dancing into the room in a nankeen dress and tippet, a hat with blue ribands, long washing-gloves which left the elbows bare, and blue shoes tied with a bunch of ribands. Bright, beautiful, buoyant—she was a picture in herself; and Jabez turned from the dingy engraving to think so. She often came tripping into the warehouse or the kitchen, and exchanged a bright word with one or other, and away again; but Jabez had thought of her only as a pretty playful child until that afternoon. Joshua Brookes pointing Hogarth’s lessons had given the one spur; that lovely brown-eyed, brown-haired maiden, with her simple, “Come, Jabez—I’m ready,” had given another.