With such conversation as this did mother and daughter endeavour to divert their minds from dwelling on the painful reflection which the latter's occupation was so well calculated to excite. An early hour of the following morning saw Jessy Flowerdew seated in a little cart, well lined with straw by her doting father, who proposed driving her himself into the city. A _small, blue-painted chest_, a bandbox, and one or two small bundles, formed the whole of her travelling accompaniments. She herself was wrapped in a scarlet mantle, and wore on her head a light straw bonnet, of tasteful shape, and admirably adapted to the complexion and contour of the fine countenance which it gracefully enclosed. After a delay of a few minutes--for the cart in which Jessy was seated was still standing at the door--her father, dressed in his Sunday's suit, came out of the house, stepped up to the horse's head, took the reins in his hand, and gently put in motion the little humble conveyance which was to bear his daughter away from the home of her childhood, and to place her in the house of the stranger. Unable to sustain the agony of a last parting, Jessy's mother had not come out of the house to see her daughter start on her journey; but she was seen, when the cart had proceeded a little way, standing at the door, with her apron at her eyes, looking after it with an expression of the most heartfelt sorrow. 'There's my mother, father,' said Jessy, in a choking voice, on getting a sight of the former in the affecting attitude above described--but she could add no more. In the next instant her face was buried in her handkerchief. Her father turned round on her calling his attention to her mother, but instantly, and without saying a word, resumed the silent, plodding pace which the circumstance had for a moment interrupted. In little more than an hour the humble equipage, whose progress we have been tracing, entered the city. Humble, however, as that equipage was, it did not prevent the passers-by from marking the singular beauty of her by whom it was occupied. Many were they who looked round, and stood and gazed in admiration after the little cart and its occupant, as they rattled along the 'stony street.' Their further progress, however, was now a short one. In a few minutes Flowerdew and his daughter found themselves at the professor's door. The former now tenderly lifted out Jessy from the cart--for her sylph-like form, so light and slender, was nothing in the arms of the robust farmer--and placed her in safety on the flag-stones. Her little trunk and bandbox were next taken out by the same friendly hand, and deposited beside her. This done, Flowerdew rapped at the professor's door. It was opened. The father and daughter entered; and, in an hour after--long before which her father had left her--the latter was engaged in the duties of her new situation.