that there was a great probability of its being sound. We agreed to say nothing to Mr Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard; and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious talk with him.

So, after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly right in whatever he said.

“And how do you get on, Richard?” said I. I always sat down on the other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.

“Oh! Well enough!” said Richard.

“He can’t say better than that, Esther, can he?” cried my pet, triumphantly.

I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I couldn’t.

“Well enough?” I repeated.

“Yes,” said Richard, “well enough. It’s rather jog-trotty and humdrum. But it’ll do as well as anything else!”

“O! my dear Richard!” I remonstrated.

“What’s the matter?” said Richard.

“Do as well as anything else!”

“I don’t think there’s any harm in that, Dame Durden,” said Ada, looking so confidingly at me across him! “Because if it will do as well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.”

“O yes, I hope so,” returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair from his forehead. “After all, it may be only a kind of probation till our suit is — I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit. Forbidden ground! O yes, it’s all right enough. Let us talk about something else.”

Ada would have done so, willingly, and with a full persuasion that we had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.

“No, but Richard,” said I, “and my dear Ada! Consider how important it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It will be too late, very soon.”

“O yes! We must talk about it!” said Ada. “But I think Richard is right.”

What was the use of my trying to look wise, when she was so pretty, and so engaging, and so fond of him!

“Mr and Mrs Badger were here yesterday, Richard,” said I, “and they seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the profession.”

“Did they though?” said Richard. “O! Well, that rather alters the case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don’t care much about it. But O, it don’t matter! It’ll do as well as anything else!”

“You hear him, Ada!” said I.

“The fact is,” Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half jocosely, “it is not quite in my way. I don’t take to it. And I get too much of Mrs Bayham Badger’s first and second.”