"In my dressing-room," said Helen. "No, no," cried Rosalind; "I would not have to sit with you there for an hour, watching you quiver and quake every time a door opened, for my heiresship. Let us walk to the great lime-tree, and stay there till you come." "And so envelop yourselves in a November woodland fog, wherein to sit waiting till about four o'clock! The wisdom lies with Helen this time, Miss Torrington; I think you have both of you been pelted long enough with falling leaves for to-day, and therefore I strongly recommend that you come in and wait for my communication beside a blazing fire. Have you no new book, no lively novel or fancy-stirring romance, wherewith to beguile the time?" "Novels and romances! Oh! Mr. Mowbray,--what a desperate sinner you must be! The subscription at Hookham's has been out these three months; and the same dear box that used to be brought in amidst the eager rejoicings of the whole family, is now become the monthly vehicle of Evangelical Magazines, Christian Observers, Missionary Reports, and Religious Tracts, of all imaginable sorts and sizes. We have no other modern literature allowed us." "Poor girls!" said Charles, laughing; "what do you do for books?" "Why, the old library supplies us indifferently well, I must confess; and as Fanny has changed her morning quarters from thence to the print-room, which is now converted into a chapel of ease for the vicar, we contrive to abduct from thence such volumes as we wish for without difficulty. But we were once very near getting a book, which, I have been told, is of the most exquisite interest and pathos of any in the language, by a pleasant blunder of Mrs. Mowbray's. I chanced to be in the room with her one day when she read aloud an old advertisement which she happened to glance her eye upon, stitched up in a Review of some dozen years standing I believe, 'Some passages in the life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel.' 'That's a book we ought to have,' said she very solemnly; 'Rosalind, give me that list for Hatchard's, I will add this.' I took up the advertisement as she laid it down and, not having it before her eyes, I suspect that she made some blunder about the title; for, when the box came down, I took care to be present at the opening of it, and to my great amusement, instead of the little volume that I was hoping to see, I beheld all Blair's works, with a scrap of paper from one of the shopmen, on which was written, 'Mrs. Mowbray is respectfully informed that the whole of Blair's works are herewith forwarded, but that J. P. is not aware of any other life of Adam than that written by Moses.' This was a terrible disappointment to me, I assure you."