and the tea-drinking, at that early date, never took place. Either on the way home from Miss Nimmo’s, or on some errand the following day, the poet was knocked down in the street by a coach, and thus, instead of hastening to the Potterrow on the wings of an exalted friendship, he found himself crippled and confined to his lodging in St. James’s Square with a broken knee-pan and a highly-irritated temper. In the Potterrow the news of this untimely accident came as a crushing disappointment. Nancy cried like a child, and Alison, who had not shed such tears herself since she was seven years of age, strove to comfort her with every device of words and every promise of future compensation that she could think of. ’He’ll come yet—of course he will, Nancy,’ she said cheerfully; ’and then, you know, he’ll write.’ Alas! easy words! Had poor Alison but foreseen with what a fatal facility he would, and did, write: with what awful and voluminous avidity they both would fall upon pens, ink and paper, she would not have spoken so lightly. Could she but have had a vision of that weary sequence of thick letters, that only too often her own faithful though unwilling hands would have to carry, she would not have been so delighted when the first one was written and the first received. Nancy, in a fever of thwarted eagerness, had at first threatened to rush off to visit the bard in his confinement. ’I must see him!’ she cried, stamping her little foot. ’I shall, and will! What’s to prevent me? Am I not a wife and mother? Are we not all relatives—sons and daughters of Adam? Why should a censorious world put difficulties in the way of my visiting my poor friend? I’ll not be bound by these ridiculous conventionalities!’ But Alison’s sound natural sense averted the threatened indiscretion. ’’Twould embarrass the poor man to receive you, Nancy,’ she sensibly said. ’You know you have told me yourself how low is his station in the world, and ’tis little likely he has a room fit to see ladies in, and it would hurt his pride that you should find that out. And then—and then, your cousin, Mr. Herries, who does not favour—’ ’Drat my cousin!’ said Nancy, petulantly, ’and you to quote him, as solemn as the owl himself! But ’tis true—God’s truth, indeed—I daren’t offend him. And most consumedly it would offend his highness—such a visit on my part—if it got to his ears. No, you are right, Ally—wise, Ally! I see it. I’ll abandon this visit, though ’twould but be one of kindness and mercy. I’ll take me to my pen. Thank Heaven for the pen, Ally, that permits no real separation—no severing of souls—between friend and friend!’