"Thank you, "Tilda, dear," retorted Miss Squeers, majestically.

"Or you can talk to each other, if you don't choose to talk to us," said Miss Price, rallying her dear friend. "John, why don't you say something?"

"Say summat?" repeated the Yorkshireman.

"Ay, and not sit there so silent and glum."

"Weel, then!" said the Yorkshireman, striking the table heavily with his fist, "what I say 's this- Dang my bones and body, if I stan' this any longer. Do ye gang whoam wi' me, and do yon loight an' toight young whipster look sharp out for a brokken head, next time he comes under my hond."

"Mercy on us, what's all this?" cried Miss Price, in affected astonishment.

"Cum whoam, tell 'e, cum whoam," replied the Yorkshireman, sternly. And as he delivered the reply, Miss Squeers burst into a shower of tears; arising in part from desperate vexation, and part, from an impotent desire to lacerate somebody's countenance with her fair finger-nails.

This state of things had been brought about by divers means and workings. Miss Squeers had brought it about by aspiring to the high state and condition of being matrimonially engaged, without good grounds for so doing: Miss Price had brought it about by indulging in three motives of action: first, a desire to punish her friend for laying claim to a rivalship in dignity, having no good title; secondly, the gratification of her own vanity, in receiving the compliments of a smart young man; and thirdly, a wish to convince the corn-factor of the great danger he ran, in deferring the celebration of their expected nuptials: while Nicholas had brought it about by half an hour's gayety and thoughtlessness, and a very sincere desire to avoid the imputation of inclining at all to Miss Squeers. So the means employed, and the end produced, were alike the most natural in the world; for young ladies will look forward to being married, and will avail themselves of all opportunities of displaying their own attractions to the best advantage, down to the very end of time, as they have done from its beginning.

"Why, and here's Fanny in tears now!" exclaimed Miss Price, as if in fresh amazement. "What can be the matter?"

"Oh! you don't know, Miss, of course you don't know. Pray don't trouble yourself to inquire," said Miss Squeers, producing that change of countenance which children call making a face.

"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed Miss Price.

"And who cares whether you are sure or not, ma'am?" retorted Miss Squeers, making another face.

"You are monstrous polite, ma'am," said Miss Price.

"I shall not come to you to take lessons in the art, ma'am!" retorted Miss Squeers.

"You need n't take the trouble to make yourself plainer than you are, ma'am, however," rejoined Miss Price, "because that's quite unnecessary."

Miss Squeers in reply turned very red, and thanked God that she had n't got the bold faces of some people. Miss Price, in rejoinder, congratulated herself upon not being possessed of the envious feelings of other people; whereupon Miss Squeers made some general remark touching the danger of associating with low persons; in which Miss Price entirely coincided; observing that it was very true indeed, and she had thought so a long time.

""Tilda," exclaimed Miss Squeers with dignity, "I hate you.' "Ah! there's no love lost between us, I assure you," said Miss Price, tying her bonnet strings with a jerk. "You'll cry your eyes out when I'm gone; you know you will."

"I scorn your words, Minx," said Miss Squeers.

"You pay me a great compliment when you say so," answered the miller's daughter, courtesying very low. "Wish you a very good night, ma'am, and pleasant dreams attend your sleep!"

With this parting benediction, Miss Price swept from the room, followed by the huge Yorkshireman, who exchanged with Nicholas, at parting, that peculiarly expressive scowl with which the cut-and-thrust counts, in melo-dramatic performances, inform each other they will meet again.

They were no sooner gone, than Miss Squeers fulfilled the prediction of her quondam friend by giving vent to a most copious burst of tears, and uttering various dismal lamentations and incoherent words. Nicholas stood looking on for a few seconds, rather doubtful what to do, but feeling uncertain whether the fit would end in his being embraced or scratched, and considering that either infliction would be equally agreeable, he walked off very quietly, while Miss Squeers was moaning in her pockethandkerchief.

"This is one consequence," thought Nicholas, when he had groped his way to the dark sleeping-room, "of my cursed readi

ness to adapt myself to any society in which chance carried me."

He listened for a few minutes, but all was quiet.

"I was glad," he murmured, "to grasp at any relief from the sight of this dreadful place, or the presence of its vile master."

So saying, he felt his way among the throng of weary-hearted sleepers, and crept into his poor bed.

THE FIRST SPIRITS.

(From "A Christmas Carol.")

WHEN Scrooge awoke it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve !

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve and stopped.

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Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It is n't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon.”

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because "Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by.

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The

more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought.

Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?"

Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half-past!" said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a halfrecumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them as close to it as I am now to you, and I am now standing in the spirit at your elbow.

It was a strange figure like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscu

lar; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked Scrooge.

"I am! ""

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

"Who and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long past?" inquired Scrooge; observant of its dwarfish stature.

Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him: but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.

"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow?"

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

VOL. VII. — - 21