fire--even an umbrella would be something--but you did
quite right, dear Marchioness. I should have died without
you!"

IT was well for the small servant that she was of a sharp,
quick nature, or the consequence of sending her out alone,
from the very neighbourhood in which it was most danger-
ous for her to appear, would probably have been the restora-
tion of Miss Sally Brass to the supreme authority over her
person. Not unmindful of the risk she ran, however, the
Marchioness no sooner left the house than she dived into
the first dark by-way that presented itself, and, without
any present reference to the point to which her journey
tended, made it her first business to put two good miles of
brick and mortar between herself and Bevis Marks.

When she had accomplished this object, she began to
shape her course for the notary's office, to which--shrewdly
inquiring of apple-women and oyster-sellers at street-cor-
ners, rather than in lighted shops or of well-dressed people,
at the hazard of attracting notice--she easily procured a
direction. As carrier-pigeons, on being first let loose in a
strange place beat the air at random for a short time, before
darting off towards the spot for which they are designed,
so did the Marchioness flutter round and round until she
believed herself in safety, and then bear swiftly down upon
the port for which she was bound.

She had no bonnet--nothing on her head but a great cap
which in some old time had been worn by Sally Brass,
whose taste in head-dresses was, as we have seen, peculiar
--and her speed was rather retarded than assisted by her
shoes, which, being extremely large and slipshod, flew off
every now and then, and were difficult to find again, among
the crowd of passengers. Indeed, the poor little creature
experienced so much trouble and delay from having to
grope for these articles of dress in mud and kennel, and
suffered in these researches so much jostling, pushing,
squeezing, and bandying from hand to hand, that by the
time she reached the street in which the notary lived, she
was fairly worn out and exhausted, and could not refrain
from tears.

But to have got there at last was a great comfort, especi-

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