should be required as counters if he sat down to cards, and the ring to flash conviction upon the eyes of the assembled guests that the wearer was an eligible partner for life of Miss Maria Wilcocks Garton.

Admiring the worldly wisdom of the youth, and perceiving nothing very unreasonable in his request, Mrs. Reddish suffered herself to be prevailed upon to accede to it. The boy was right. It was a crying shame that his father who, by the bye, had recently permitted him to open an account with a tailor-should not long ago have suffered him to make a better appearance. Accordingly, she handed out the four sovereigns, with awful and almost terrifying injunctions that he should take the most painful care of them, and placed the ring on his finger with her own hands, shedding a few tears, as she did so, to the memory of its original

wearer.

Dick, affected by these symptoms, made all needful promises and protestations, and was suffered to depart. He brightened wonderfully as he descended the stairs, and was all himself again at the street door. The post-man, as he sallied forth, was delivering on the opposite side of the way, and held up a letter to his nose, intimating that it's destination was Sparrow's; but Dick waved his fingers gracefully, and directed his thumb backwards towards the first floor, thereby giving the public functionary to understand that epistolary matters would be duly attended to within, and so went on his way rejoicing.

Now, we have seemed to intimate, in what has gone before, that Dick Sparrow was in a hurry,-a circumstance likely to excite the surprise of the acute reader, seeing that Dick had just swallowed a cup of tea, and was invited to sup with a friend somewhere near Islington. But the fact is, he had another and a previous appointment to keep. If the truth must be told, Dick Sparrow was, in the most innocent sense in which so discreditable an epithet may be applied, a "gay Lothario." However profound the depth, and however sincere the truth of his love for Maria Wilcocks Garton, his shallower and less constant predilections occasionally took random and vagrant rambles after other young ladies. It so happened that, about a week previously, his friend Frank

VOL. I.-W. H.

Townsend had imparted to him the fact of his having made the acquaintance of two "nice girls," sisters, whose love of sight-seeing was so tremendous, and whose confidence in the efficiency of his protection was so unbounded, that they absorbed the whole of his spare time, during which each arm was constantly kept at right angles. He had appointed, therefore, Dick Sparrow to meet him this very evening at seven o'clock, under the portico of the Lyceum Theatre, that he might there and then be introduced, and be henceforth duly qualified to take one of them-which of the two he pleasedoff his hands, or rather his elbows; his friend Frank averring that they were the most delightful and ethereal beings extant, but cautiously withholding the fact, that when these sylph-like figures glided past a box-keeper, or honored a stool in a pastry-cook's, they were, to all intents and purposes, a source of as grave expense as though they were the most corporeal couple that ever trudged into a theatre, or made ice-creams vanishing quantities.

"I'll just go and make my bow to the two young women," said Dick musingly, "because I promised Frank I would. If they want to go into the promenade concert, it's only two bob to my share, and I can easily get away. I mustn't do these things, though, when I'm once married. I wonder what Maria would say if she knew it. Would n't she go on at me, that's all!"

Thus paltering with fearful fancies, he turned into a familiar tobacconist's shop; for he suddenly remembered that Garton was an inveterate smoker, and that, by the time he arrived at his house, the vapor of cigars was likely to be in the ascendant.

The girl behind the counter did not at first know our young friend, so splendid was his appearance, and so distingwy " was his air. When, however, she did recognize him, she asked, lifting the old accustomed little mahogany lid,

A penny Pickwick, sir?"

Dick returned a sort of deaf look from a kind of unintelligent eye, which made the girl titter, and, quietly raising another lid, he selected half a dozen of the finest woodvilles, taking good care that the ring should flame amazement from his little finger the while, and, throwing down two shillings with the utmost apparent indif

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