we thought it right to compound for no more than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise; and if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat down to work.

She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help reddening a little, now and then: partly with the smart, and partly with vexation at being able to do no better: but she soon got over that, and began to improve rapidly. So, day after day, she, and my darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town, and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.

Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious “to learn housekeeping,” as she said. Now, Mercy upon us! the idea of her learning housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke, that I laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she proposed it. However, I said, “Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn of me, my dear;” and I showed her all my books and methods, and all my fidgetty ways. You would have supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have thought that there never was a greater imposter than I, with a blinder follower than Caddy Jellyby.

So, what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home, with Caddy, to see what could be done there; and Ada and Charley remained behind, to take care of my guardian.

When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where preparations were in progress too; a good many, I observed, for enhancing the comforts of old Mr Turveydrop, and a few for putting the newly-married couple away cheaply at the top of the house; but our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the wedding breakfast, and to imbue Mrs Jellyby beforehand with some faint sense of the occasion.

The latter was the more difficult thing of the two, because Mrs Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be littered with straw. Mrs Jellyby sat there all day, drinking strong coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr Jellyby came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got something to eat, if the servant would give him anything; and then, feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down the house, as they had always been accustomed to do.

The production of these devoted little sacrifices, in any presentable condition, being quite out of the question at a week’s notice, I proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could, on her marriage morning, in the attic where they all slept; and should confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama’s room, and a clean breakfast. In truth Mrs Jellyby required a good deal of attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably since I first knew her, and her hair looking like the mane of a dustman’s horse.

Thinking that the display of Caddy’s wardrobe would be the best means of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs Jellyby to come and look at it spread out on Caddy’s bed, in the evening after the unwholesome boy was gone.

“My dear Miss Summerson,” said she, rising from her desk, with her usual sweetness of temper, “these are really ridiculous preparations, though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is something so inexpressibly absurd to me, in the idea of Caddy being married! O Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!”