previous times of unprecedented steadiness, had turned suddenly wild and wicked for the same reason, and, in an ecstasy of unrequited love, taken to wrench off door-knockers, and invert the boxes of rheumatic watchmen! How had she recruited the king’s service, both by sea and land, through rendering desperate his loving subjects between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five! How many young ladies had publicly professed, with tears in their eyes, that for their tastes she was much too short, too tall, too bold, too cold, too stout, too thin, too fair, too dark—too everything but handsome! How many old ladies, taking counsel together, had thanked Heaven their daughters were not like her, and had hoped she might come to no harm, and had thought she would come to no good, and had wondered what people saw in her, and had arrived at the conclusion that she was ‘going off’ in her looks, or had never come on in them, and that she was a thorough imposition and a popular mistake!

And yet here was this same Dolly Varden, so whimsical and hard to please that she was Dolly Varden still, all smiles and dimples and pleasant looks, and caring no more for the fifty or sixty young fellows who at that very moment were breaking their hearts to marry her, than if so many oysters had been crossed in love and opened afterwards.

Dolly hugged her father as has been already stated, and having hugged her mother also, accompanied both into the little parlour where the cloth was already laid for dinner, and where Miss Miggs— a trifle more rigid and bony than of yore—received her with a sort of hysterical gasp, intended for a smile. Into the hands of that young virgin, she delivered her bonnet and walking dress (all of a dreadful, artful, and designing kind), and then said with a laugh, which rivalled the locksmith’s music, ‘How glad I always am to be at home again!’

‘And how glad we always are, Doll,’ said her father, putting back the dark hair from her sparkling eyes, ‘to have you at home. Give me a kiss.’

If there had been anybody of the male kind there to see her do it— but there was not—it was a mercy.

‘I don’t like your being at the Warren,’ said the locksmith, ‘I can’t bear to have you out of my sight. And what is the news over yonder, Doll?’

‘What news there is, I think you know already,’ replied his daughter. ‘I am sure you do though.’

‘Aye?’ cried the locksmith. ‘What’s that?’

‘Come, come,’ said Dolly, ‘you know very well. I want you to tell me why Mr Haredale—oh, how gruff he is again, to be sure!—has been away from home for some days past, and why he is travelling about (we know he is travelling, because of his letters) without telling his own niece why or wherefore.’

‘Miss Emma doesn’t want to know, I’ll swear,’ returned the locksmith.

‘I don’t know that,’ said Dolly; ‘but I do, at any rate. Do tell me. Why is he so secret, and what is this ghost story, which nobody is to tell Miss Emma, and which seems to be mixed up with his going away? Now I see you know by your colouring so.’

‘What the story means, or is, or has to do with it, I know no more than you, my dear,’ returned the locksmith, ‘except that it’s some foolish fear of little Solomon’s—which has, indeed, no meaning in it, I suppose. As to Mr Haredale’s journey, he goes, as I believe—’

‘Yes,’ said Dolly.

‘As I believe,’ resumed the locksmith, pinching her cheek, ‘on business, Doll. What it may be, is quite another matter. Read Blue Beard, and don’t be too curious, pet; it’s no business of yours or mine, depend upon that; and here’s dinner, which is much more to the purpose.’