O for the pen of that ready writer who is always in the humour for work, who can always write, sir, who is never at a loss, who sits down before a ream of foolscap paper, and tosses off sheet after sheet, sir, until he is surrounded by piles of manuscript! I have seen him do it, continues the friend at our elbow--seen him do it. And then there’s Miss ----, who is so awfully popular, you know, and stands to her work like an artist at his easel; she can write two novels a year like fun, and clever books too. George So-and-so, he goes down on his knees to write, and turns off slip after slip like a gusset and band coming out of a sewing machine. Mrs. ---- plods away all day long, whether she likes it or not--pegs away, sir, and produces a certain amount of copy before she dines; and she can write two books at once, sir, like winking. That’s the woman for my money. O for the pen of one of these ready writers, that we might throw off in a few rapid pages the conclusion of all that romantic story which Paul Somerton told the barrister a few evenings after that day at Brighton. If we sat before that ream of foolscap, and filled every sheet, we could not do full justice to the extraordinary narrative, nor to the imagination of Mrs. Jefferson Crawley, the young lady whom you met in the early part of our history as the showman’s daughter. You remember how she gobbled up the tripe on that first evening, when Mr. Dibble joined the company of the Temple of Magic to do the outside business. You would hardly give her credit for imaginative power. She handled the cards well, and was great in the basket trick, but you would not expect her to possess what phrenologists call Ideality, in a large degree. Perhaps the education which she had received in a few months as the wife of our old acquaintance Mr. Gibbs, _alias_ Jefferson Crawley, had been beneficial to her in this respect. Mr. Crawley nevertheless had been disappointed in the young woman. He did not find that her abilities as a shuffler at cards were of any great benefit to him; but she was useful in some respects. There was an air of respectability that was beneficial sometimes in speaking of “my wife,” and introducing Mrs. Crawley, though the class of persons to whom introductions usually took place cast knowing glances at each other, and commenced desperate flirtations with the young lady immediately. This was useful too, and Mr. Gibbs sometimes traded upon it in a way that was by no means pleasant to the showman’s daughter. She was not a refined young woman as you have seen, not over-particular as you know; but she was vain of her good looks, and had just sufficient of woman’s _amour propre_, speedily to contract a contempt for a husband who was base enough and mean enough to be utterly indifferent to his wife’s honour.