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presented itself. The Marchioness dealt, turned up a knave, and

omitted to take the usual advantage; upon which Mr Swiveller called out

as loud as he could--'Two for his heels!'

The Marchioness jumped up quickly and clapped her hands. 'Arabian

Night, certainly,' thought Mr Swiveller; 'they always clap their hands

instead of ringing the bell. Now for the two thousand black slaves,

with jars of jewels on their heads!'

It appeared, however, that she had only clapped her hands for joy; for

directly afterward she began to laugh, and then to cry; declaring, not

in choice Arabic but in familiar English, that she was 'so glad, she

didn't know what to do.'

'Marchioness,' said Mr Swiveller, thoughtfully, 'be pleased to draw

nearer. First of all, will you have the goodness to inform me where I

shall find my voice; and secondly, what has become of my flesh?'

The Marchioness only shook her head mournfully, and cried again;

whereupon Mr Swiveller (being very weak) felt his own eyes affected

likewise.

'I begin to infer, from your manner, and these appearances,

Marchioness,' said Richard after a pause, and smiling with a trembling

lip, 'that I have been ill.'

'You just have!' replied the small servant, wiping her eyes. 'And

haven't you been a talking nonsense!'

'Oh!' said Dick. 'Very ill, Marchioness, have I been?'

'Dead, all but,' replied the small servant. 'I never thought you'd get

better. Thank Heaven you have!'

Mr Swiveller was silent for a long while. By and bye, he began to talk

again, inquiring how long he had been there.

'Three weeks to-morrow,' replied the servant.

'Three what?' said Dick.

'Weeks,' returned the Marchioness emphatically; 'three long, slow

weeks.'

The bare thought of having been in such extremity, caused Richard to

fall into another silence, and to lie flat down again, at his full

length. The Marchioness, having arranged the bed-clothes more

comfortably, and felt that his hands and forehead were quite cool--a

discovery that filled her with delight--cried a little more, and then

applied herself to getting tea ready, and making some thin dry toast.

While she was thus engaged, Mr Swiveller looked on with a grateful

heart, very much astonished to see how thoroughly at home she made

herself, and attributing this attention, in its origin, to Sally Brass,

whom, in his own mind, he could not thank enough. When the Marchioness

had finished her toasting, she spread a clean cloth on a tray, and

brought him some crisp slices and a great basin of weak tea, with which

(she said) the doctor had left word he might refresh himself when he

awoke. She propped him up with pillows, if not as skilfully as if she

had been a professional nurse all her life, at least as tenderly; and

looked on with unutterable satisfaction while the patient--stopping

every now and then to shake her by the hand--took his poor meal with an

appetite and relish, which the greatest dainties of the earth, under

any other circumstances, would have failed to provoke. Having cleared

away, and disposed everything comfortably about him again, she sat down

at the table to take her own tea.

'Marchioness,' said Mr Swiveller, 'how's Sally?'

The small servant screwed her face into an expression of the very

uttermost entanglement of slyness, and shook her head.

'What, haven't you seen her lately?' said Dick.

'Seen her!' cried the small servant. 'Bless you, I've run away!'

Mr Swiveller immediately laid himself down again quite flat, and so

remained for about five minutes. By slow degrees he resumed his

sitting posture after that lapse of time, and inquired:

'And where do you live, Marchioness?'

'Live!' cried the small servant. 'Here!'

'Oh!' said Mr Swiveller.

And with that he fell down flat again, as suddenly as if he had been

shot. Thus he remained, motionless and bereft of speech, until she had

finished her meal, put everything in its place, and swept the hearth;

when he motioned her to bring a chair to the bedside, and, being

propped up again, opened a farther conversation.

'And so,' said Dick, 'you have run away?'

'Yes,' said the Marchioness, 'and they've been a tizing of me.'

'Been--I beg your pardon,' said Dick--'what have they been doing?'

'Been a tizing of me--tizing you know--in the newspapers,' rejoined the

Marchioness.

'Aye, aye,' said Dick, 'advertising?'

The small servant nodded, and winked. Her eyes were so red with waking

and crying, that the Tragic Muse might have winked with greater

consistency. And so Dick felt.

'Tell me,' said he, 'how it was that you thought of coming here.'

'Why, you see,' returned the Marchioness, 'when you was gone, I hadn't

any friend at all, because the lodger he never come back, and I didn't

know where either him or you was to be found, you know. But one

morning, when I was--'

'Was near a keyhole?' suggested Mr Swiveller, observing that she

faltered.

'Well then,' said the small servant, nodding; 'when I was near the

office keyhole--as you see me through, you know--I heard somebody

saying that she lived here, and was the lady whose house you lodged at,

and that you was took very bad, and wouldn't nobody come and take care

of you. Mr Brass, he says, "It's no business of mine," he says; and

Miss Sally, she says, "He's a funny chap, but it's no business of

mine;" and the lady went away, and slammed the door to, when she went

out, I can tell you. So I run away that night, and come here, and told

'em you was my brother, and they believed me, and I've been here ever

since.'

'This poor little Marchioness has been wearing herself to death!' cried

Dick.

'No I haven't,' she returned, 'not a bit of it. Don't you mind about

me. I like sitting up, and I've often had a sleep, bless you, in one

of them chairs. But if you could have seen how you tried to jump out

o' winder, and if you could have heard how you used to keep on singing

and making speeches, you wouldn't have believed it--I'm so glad you're

better, Mr Liverer.'

'Liverer indeed!' said Dick thoughtfully. 'It's well I am a liverer.

I strongly suspect I should have died, Marchioness, but for you.'

At this point, Mr Swiveller took the small servant's hand in his again,

and being, as we have seen, but poorly, might in struggling to express

his thanks have made his eyes as red as hers, but that she quickly

changed the theme by making him lie down, and urging him to keep very

quiet.

'The doctor,' she told him, 'said you was to be kept quite still, and

there was to be no noise nor nothing. Now, take a rest, and then we'll

talk again. I'll sit by you, you know. If you shut your eyes, perhaps

you'll go to sleep. You'll be all the better for it, if you do.'

The Marchioness, in saying these words, brought a little table to the

bedside, took her seat at it, and began to work away at the concoction

of some cooling drink, with the address of a score of chemists.

Richard Swiveller being indeed fatigued, fell into a slumber, and

waking in about half an hour, inquired what time it was.

'Just gone half after six,' replied his small friend, helping him to

sit up again.

'Marchioness,' said Richard, passing his hand over his forehead and

turning suddenly round, as though the subject but that moment flashed

upon him, 'what has become of Kit?'

He had been sentenced to transportation for a great many years, she

said.

'Has he gone?' asked Dick--'his mother--how is she,--what has become of

her?'

His nurse shook her head, and answered that she knew nothing about

them. 'But, if I thought,' said she, very slowly, 'that you'd keep

quiet, and not put yourself into another fever, I could tell you--but

I won't now.'

'Yes, do,' said Dick. 'It will amuse me.'

'Oh! would it though!' rejoined the small servant, with a horrified

look. 'I know better than that. Wait till you're better and then I'll

tell you.'

Dick looked very earnestly at his little friend: and his eyes, being

large and hollow from illness, assisted the expression so much, that

she was quite frightened, and besought him not to think any more about

it. What had already fallen from her, however, had not only piqued his

curiosity, but seriously alarmed him, wherefore he urged her to tell

him the worst at once.

'Oh there's no worst in it,' said the small servant. 'It hasn't

anything to do with you.'

'Has it anything to do with--is it anything you heard through chinks or

keyholes--and that you were not intended to hear?' asked Dick, in a

breathless state.

'Yes,' replied the small servant.

'In--in Bevis Marks?' pursued Dick hastily. 'Conversations between

Brass and Sally?'

'Yes,' cried the small servant again.

Richard Swiveller thrust his lank arm out of bed, and, gripping her by

the wrist and drawing her close to him, bade her out with it, and

freely too, or he would not answer for the consequences; being wholly

unable to endure the state of excitement and expectation. She, seeing

that he was greatly agitated, and that the effects of postponing her

revelation might be much more injurious than any that were likely to

ensue from its being made at once, promised compliance, on condition

that the patient kept himself perfectly quiet, and abstained from

starting up or tossing about.

'But if you begin to do that,' said the small servant, 'I'll leave off.

And so I tell you.'

'You can't leave off, till you have gone on,' said Dick. 'And do go

on, there's a darling. Speak, sister, speak. Pretty Polly say. Oh

tell me when, and tell me where, pray Marchioness, I beseech you!'

Unable to resist these fervent adjurations, which Richard Swiveller

poured out as passionately as if they had been of the most solemn and

tremendous nature, his companion spoke thus:

'Well! Before I run away, I used to sleep in the kitchen--where we

played cards, you know. Miss Sally used to keep the key of the kitchen

door in her pocket, and she always come down at night to take away the

candle and rake out the fire. When she had done that, she left me to

go to bed in the dark, locked the door on the outside, put the key in

her pocket again, and kept me locked up till she come down in the

morning--very early I can tell you--and let me out. I was terrible

afraid of being kept like this, because if there was a fire, I thought

they might forget me and only take care of themselves you know. So,

whenever I see an old rusty key anywhere, I picked it up and tried if

it would fit the door, and at last I found in the dust cellar a key

that did fit it.'

Here, Mr Swiveller made a violent demonstration with his legs. But the

small servant immediately pausing in her talk, he subsided again, and

pleading a momentary forgetfulness of their compact, entreated her to

proceed.

'They kept me very short,' said the small servant. 'Oh! you can't

think how short they kept me! So I used to come out at night after

they'd gone to bed, and feel about in the dark for bits of biscuit, or

sangwitches that you'd left in the office, or even pieces of orange

peel to put into cold water and make believe it was wine. Did you ever

taste orange peel and water?'

Mr Swiveller replied that he had never tasted that ardent liquor; and

once more urged his friend to resume the thread of her narrative.

'If you make believe very much, it's quite nice,' said the small

servant, 'but if you don't, you know, it seems as if it would bear a

little more seasoning, certainly. Well, sometimes I used to come out

after they'd gone to bed, and sometimes before, you know; and one or

two nights before there was all that precious noise in the office--when

the young man was took, I mean--I come upstairs while Mr Brass and Miss

Sally was a-sittin' at the office fire; and I tell you the truth, that

I come to listen again, about the key of the safe.'

Mr Swiveller gathered up his knees so as to make a great cone of the

bedclothes, and conveyed into his countenance an expression of the

utmost concern. But the small servant pausing, and holding up her

finger, the cone gently disappeared, though the look of concern did not.

'There was him and her,' said the small servant, 'a-sittin' by the

fire, and talking softly together. Mr Brass says to Miss Sally, "Upon

my word," he says "it's a dangerous thing, and it might get us into a

world of trouble, and I don't half like it." She says--you know her

way--she says, "You're the chickenest-hearted, feeblest, faintest man I

ever see, and I think," she says, "that I ought to have been the

brother, and you the sister. Isn't Quilp," she says, "our principal

support?" "He certainly is," says Mr Brass, "And an't we," she says,

"constantly ruining somebody or other in the way of business?" "We

certainly are," says Mr Brass. "Then does it signify," she says,

"about ruining this Kit when Quilp desires it?" "It certainly does not

signify," says Mr Brass. Then they whispered and laughed for a long

time about there being no danger if it was well done, and then Mr Brass

pulls out his pocket-book, and says, "Well," he says, "here it