Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher; cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr Bradley Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. The decent hair-guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent silver watch was an object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher have gone round his neck and taken care of him. Of him, insensible. Because he did not love Miss Peecher.

Miss Peecher’s favourite pupil, who assisted her in her little household, was in attendance with a can of water to replenish her little watering-pot, and sufficiently divined the state of Miss Peecher’s affections to feel it necessary that she herself should love young Charley Hexam. So, there was a double palpitation among the double stocks and double wall-flowers, when the master and the boy looked over the little gate.

“A fine evening, Miss Peecher,” said the Master.

“A very fine evening, Mr Headstone,” said Miss Peecher. “Are you taking a walk?”

“Hexam and I are going to take a long walk.”

“Charming weather,” remarked Miss Peecher, “for a long walk.”

“Ours is rather on business than mere pleasure,” said the Master.

Miss Peecher inverting her watering-pot, and very carefully shaking out the few last drops over a flower, as if there were some special virtue in them which would make it a Jack’s beanstalk before morning, called for replenishment to her pupil, who had been speaking to the boy.

“Good-night, Miss Peecher,” said the Master.

“Good-night, Mr Headstone,” said the Mistress.

The pupil had been, in her state of pupilage, so imbued with the class-custom of stretching out an arm, as if to hail a cab or omnibus, whenever she found she had an observation on hand to offer to Miss Peecher, that she often did it in their domestic relations; and she did it now.

“Well, Mary Anne?” said Miss Peecher.

“If you please, ma’am, Hexam said they were going to see his sister.”

“But that can’t be, I think,” returned Miss Peecher: “because Mr Headstone can have no business with her.”

Mary Anne again hailed.

“Well, Mary Anne?”

“If you please, ma’am, perhaps it’s Hexam’s business?”

“That may be,” said Miss Peecher. “I didn’t think of that. Not that it matters at all.”

Mary Anne again hailed.