"Velvet! Vanity! and a-whoring after strange silks," groaned Thomas. "Thomas," said Miss Courteen in her most engaging voice, "you would do anything for me?" "With God's help," agreed the footman. "And you'd do a great deal for a shilling-piece?" "To spite Beelzebub," said Thomas. "Then, Thomas, step down to the Western Colonnade, make my compliments to Miss Sukey Morton, say I hope she is better of her cold, and will she give Miss Phyllida Courteen the pleasure of her company to Mrs. Pinkle's Conversazione. But perhaps you'll forget that long message?" Thomas replied in accents of unctuous solemnity: "Better of her cold and quite recovered." "Yes, but there's more." "Waste not, want not," he answered severely. "Oh Lud! I suppose I were wise to write it down," with which Miss Courteen tried the eleventh haberdasher. The pinks were just as light, the carmines as crude and fresh as ever. But at the opposite counter it was possible to buy the most agreeable paper; so Miss Courteen bought a quire, and also a box of wafers marked with a laurel-wreathed C. Then she borrowed old Mrs. Rambone's crow-quill pen with which the accounts were made up every evening in the little back parlour, and Miss Lettice Rambone politely cleared a corner of the counter and brought out a standish, while Phyllida put her swansdown muff on the chair because, though it was high enough to pull about haberdashery, it wasn't high enough for writing letters. After much arrangement, she wrote: "MY DEAREST MISS MORTON,--_I hope you are better of your cold. I am truly anxious that you should come and see me this afternoon at four o'clock on a matter of great importance. I am truly distressed by a most unlucky Event. I doubt my dearest Sukey can guess what disturbs her. Ever affect. and truly devoted_ PHYLLIDA. P.S. _Pray come_. P.P.S. _I saw a Red Coat not unknown to a certain young lady now resident at Curtain Wells. The said Red Coat made a most polite bow_." Ph. C. Then Phyllida sealed the note with one of her new wafers, and Thomas unscrewed the knob of his tall stick and put the note inside and the shilling-piece in his waistcoat pocket and marched away down the High Street, while Phyllida rushed off with her muff held up to the East wind which was quite cold when one was walking so fast. For the Western Colonnade, you turned to the right, but if you were going to Curtain Garden, you turned to the left, and Phyllida turned to the left.