I have set aside ye book, ye picture, and ye plaited hair in my desk for conveniency, where I will show them to you when I am next rejoic'd by y'r improving conversation.

Until then, in grief or in happiness, in health and sickness, I trust I shall ever continue, with y'r same sincerity, "Your humble and obliged Servant and disciple "REBECCA HAYGARTHE." Thus end my excerpts from the correspondence of Mrs.Haygarthe.

They are very interesting to me, as containing the vague shadow of a vanished existence; but whether they will ever be worth setting forth in an affidavit is extremely uncertain.

Doubtless that miniature of an unknown girl which caused so much consternation in the mind of sober Mrs.Rebecca was no other than the "Molly" whose gray eyes reminded me of Charlotte Halliday.
As I copied Mrs.Rebecca's quaint epistles, in the midnight stillness, the things of which I was writing arose before me like a picture.

I could see the blue parlour that Sunday evening; the sober couple seated primly opposite to each other; the china monsters on the high chimneypiece; the blue-and-white Dutch tiles, with queer squat figures of Flemish citizens on foot and on horseback; the candles burning dimly on the spindle-legged table--two poor pale flames reflected ghastly in the dark polished panels of the wainscot; the big open Bible on an adjacent table; the old silver tankard, and buckhorn-handled knives and forks set out for supper; the solemn eight-day clock, ticking drearily in the corner; and amid all that sombre old-fashioned comfort, gray-haired Matthew sighing and lamenting for his vanished youth.
I have grown strangely romantic since I have fallen in love with Charlotte Halliday.