It

was determined to treat his family kindly and respectably, and make a house of Queen's Crawley once more. pleased him to think that he should be its chief. He proposed to use the vast influence that his commanding talents and position must speedily acquire for him in the county to get his brother placed and his cousins decently provided for, and perhaps had a little sting of repentance as he thought that he was the proprietor of all that they had hoped for. In the course of three or four days' reign his bearing was changed, and his plans quite fixed he determined to rule justly and honestly, to depose Lady Southdown, and to be on the friendliest possible terms with all the relations of his blood.

So he dictated a letter to his brother Rawdon-a solemn and elaborate letter, containing the profoundest observations, couched in the longest words, and filling with wonder the simple little secretary, who wrote under her husband's order. What an orator this will be,' thought she, 'when he enters the House of Commons' (on which point, and on the tyranny of Lady Southdown, Pitt had sometimes dropped hints to his wife in bed); 'how wise and good, and what a genius my husband is! I fancied him a little cold; but how good, and what a genius!

The fact is, Pitt Crawley had got every word of the letter by heart, and had studied it with diplomatic secrecy, deeply and perfectly, long before he thought fit to communicate it to his astonished wife.

This letter, with a huge black border and seal, was accordingly dispatched by Sir Pitt Crawley to his brother the colonel, in London. Rawdon Crawley was but halfpleased at the receipt of it. What's the use of going down to that stupid place?' thought he. I can't stand being alone with Pitt after dinner, and horses there and back will cost us twenty pound.'

He carried the letter, as he did all difficulties, to Becky, upstairs in her bedroom-with her chocolate, which he always made and took to her of a morning.

He put the tray with the breakfast and the letter on the dressing-table, before which Becky sat combing her yellow hair. She took up the black-edged missive, and having read it, she jumped up from the chair, crying 'Hurray! and waving the note round her head.

'Hurray?' said Rawdon, wondering at the little figure capering about in a streaming flannel dressing-gown, with tawny locks dishevelled. 'He's not left us anything, Becky. I had my share when I came of age.'

'You'll never be of age, you silly old man,' Becky replied. 'Run out now to Madam Brunoy's, for I must have some mourning and get a crape on your hat, and a black waistcoat-I don't think you've got one; order it to be brought

:

home to-morrow, so that we may be able to start on Thursday.'

You don't mean to go?' Rawdon interposed.

'Of course I mean to go. I mean that Lady Jane shall present me at Court next year. I mean that your brother shall give you a seat in Parliament, you stupid old creature. I mean that Lord Steyne shall have your vote and his, my dear, old, silly man; and that you shall be an Irish Secretary, or a West Indian Governor or a Treasurer, or a Consul, or some such thing.'

'Posting will cost a dooce of a lot of money,' grumbled Rawdon.

'We might take Southdown's carriage, which ought to be present at the funeral, as he is a relation of the family: but, no-I intend that we shall go by the coach. They'll like it better. It seems more humble

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6

Rawdy goes of course?' the colonel asked.

No such thing; why pay an extra place? He's too big to travel bodkin between you and me. Let him stay here in the nursery, and Briggs can make him a black frock. Go you and do as I bid you. And you had best tell Sparks, your man, that old Sir Pitt is dead, and that you will come in for something considerable when the affairs are arranged. He'll tell this to Raggles, who has been pressing for money, and it will console poor Raggles.' And so Becky began sipping her chocolate.

When the faithful Lord Steyne arrived in the evening, he found Becky and her companion, who was no other than our friend Briggs, busy cutting, ripping, snipping, and tearing all sorts of black stuffs available for the melancholy occasion.

'Miss Briggs and I are plunged in grief and despondency for the death of our papa, Rebecca said. 'Sir Pitt Crawley is dead, my lord. We have been tearing our hair all the morning, and now we are tearing up our old clothes.'

"Oh, Rebecca, how can you' was all that Briggs could say as she turned up her eyes.

Oh, Rebecca, how can you

echoed my lord.

'So

that old scoundrel's dead, is he? He might have been a peer if he had played his cards better. Mr. Pitt had very nearly made him; but he ratted always at the wrong time. What an old Silenus it was.'

'I might have been Silenus's widow,' said Rebecca. 'Don't you remember, Miss Briggs, how you peeped in at the door, and saw old Sir Pitt on his knees to me?' Miss Briggs, our old friend, blushed very much at this reminiscence; and was glad when Lord Steyne ordered her to go downstairs and make him a cup of tea.

Briggs was the house-dog whom Rebecca had provided as guardian of her innocence and reputation. Miss Crawley had left her a little annuity. She would have been content to remain in the Crawley family with Lady Jane, who was good to her and to everybody; but Lady Southdown

dismissed poor Briggs as quickly as decency permitted; and Mr. Pitt (who thought himself much injured by the uncalledfor generosity of his deceased relative towards a lady who had only been Miss Crawley's faithful retainer a score of years) made no objections to that exercise of the dowager's authority. Bowls and Firkin likewise received their legacies, and their dismissals; and married and set up a lodging-house, according to the custom of their kind.

:

Briggs tried to live with her relations in the country, but found that attempt was vain after the better society to which she had been accustomed. Briggs's friends, small tradesmen in a country town, quarrelled over Miss Briggs's forty pounds a year, as eagerly and more openly than Miss Crawley's kinsfolk had for that lady's inheritance. Briggs's brother, a Radical hatter and grocer, called his sister a purseproud aristocrat, because she would not advance a part of her capital to stock his shop and she would have done so most likely, but that their sister, a Dissenting shoemaker's lady, at variance with the hatter and grocer who went to another chapel, showed how their brother was on the verge of bankruptcy, and took possession of Briggs for a while. The Dissenting shoemaker wanted Miss Briggs to send his son to college, and make a gentleman of him. Between them the two families got a great portion of her private savings out of her and finally she fled to London followed by the anathemas of both, and determined to seek for servitude again as infinitely less onerous than liberty. And advertising in the papers that a Gentlewoman of agreeable manners, and accustomed to the best society, was anxious to,' &c., she took up her residence with Mr. Bowls in Half Moon Street, and waited the result of the advertisement.

So it was that she fell in with Rebecca. Mrs. Rawdon's dashing little carriage and ponies was whirling down the street one day, just as Miss Briggs, fatigued, had reached Mr. Bowls's door, after a weary walk to the Times office in the City, to insert her advertisement for the sixth time. Rebecca was driving, and at once recognized the gentlewoman with agreeable manners, and being a perfectly goodhumoured woman, as we have seen, and having a regard for Briggs, she pulled up the ponies at the doorsteps, gave the reins to the groom, and jumping out had hold of both Briggs's hands, before she of the agreeable manners had recovered from the shock of seeing an old friend.

Briggs cried, and Becky laughed a great deal, and kissed the gentlewoman as soon as they got into the passage; and thence into Mrs. Bowls's front parlour, with the red moreen curtains, and the round looking-glass, with the chained eagle above, gazing upon the back of the ticket in the window which announced Apartments to Let'

Briggs told all her history amidst those perfectly uncalledfor sobs and ejaculations of wonder with which women of her soft nature salute an old acquaintance, or regard a rencontre in the street; for though people meet other people every day, yet some there are who insist upon discovering miracles; and women, even though they have disliked each other, begin to cry when they meet, deploring and remembering the time when they last quarrelled. So, in a word, Briggs told all her history, and Becky gave a narrative of her own life, with her usual artlessness and candour.

Mrs. Bowls, late Firkin, came and listened grimly in the passage to the hysterical sniffling and giggling which went on in the front parlour. Becky had never been a favourite of hers. Since the establishment of the married couple in London they had frequented their former friends of the house of Raggles, and did not like the latter's account of the colonel's ménage. I wouldn't trust him, Ragg, my boy,' Bowls remarked : and his wife, when Mrs. Rawdon issued

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from the parlour, only he lady with a very sour

curtsy; and her fingers

like so many sausages, cold and lifeless, when she held them out in deference to Mrs. Rawdon, who persisted in shaking hands with the retired lady's-maid. She whirled away into Piccadilly, nodding, with the sweetest of smiles towards Miss Briggs, who hung nodding at the window close under the advertisementcard, and at the next moment was in the Park with a halfdozen of dandies cantering after her carriage.

When she found how her friend was situated, and how having a snug legacy from Miss Crawley, salary was no object to our gentlewoman, Becky instantly formed some benevolent little domestic plans concerning her. This was just such a companion as would suit her establishment, and she invited Briggs to come to dinner with her that very evening, when she should see Becky's dear little darling Rawdon.

Mrs. Bowls cautioned her lodger against venturing into