George say that Paul may come in any day, and would he like to find me pale and wretched-looking?
For the first time since he went away I have made myself look smart. I have put on the gown he liked me in best—Quaker grey, with crimson ribbons; and a cap which he liked too, though it never was straight when he was with me: and one day (we had both forgotten it) I gave Simpkins some orders with it perched rakishly on one side, and, alas! his breeding was not equal to the occasion, and he disgraced himself by a smile.
At present it is straight enough, but when he comes back——— I am laughing softly to myself, when Simpkins comes in, bringing my breakfast, the post-bag, and the Times.
There are two letters, one from Alice, one from Dolly, both for mother. I send them upstairs, and begin my breakfast. Then—for I have fallen into bad ways during my lonely morning meal, day after day—I open the paper, and proceed to look at the "Births, Marriages, and Deaths;" not that I know anybody who is likely to be married or dead, but because they interest me. Many a sad story is told here in three lines; many a bitter tragedy chronicled that moves me far more than the fictitious woes of an imaginary man and woman, whose misery lasts through the regulation three volumes of a novel.
"Nothing in the papers," folks cry, and perhaps they are right; there is nothing new. Newspapers are but a faithful transcript of human nature, with its vices, sins, faults, and follies, and human nature is pretty much the same to-day as it was yesterday, and will be to-morrow.
I glance through the agony column, and find it in my heart to smile at its fustian pathos. I wonder is it true that most of these heart-broken maunderings are signals from the greatest thieves in London to each other? My eye travelling downwards is caught by the announcement of the death of a Mrs. Waddell, who, after
