When Bella was seated in the carriage, she opened the little packet in her hand. It contained a pretty purse, and the purse contained a bank note for fifty pounds. “This shall be a joyful surprise for poor dear Pa,” said Bella, “and I’ll take it myself into the City!”

As she was uninformed respecting the exact locality of the place of business of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, but knew it to be near Mincing Lane, she directed herself to be driven to the corner of that darksome spot. Thence she despatched “the male domestic of Mrs Boffin,” in search of the counting- house of Chicksey Veneering and Stobbles, with a message importing that if R. Wilfer could come out, there was a lady waiting who would be glad to speak with him. The delivery of these mysterious words from the mouth of a footman caused so great an excitement in the counting-house, that a youthful scout was instantly appointed to follow Rumty, observe the lady, and come in with his report. Nor was the agitation by any means diminished, when the scout rushed back with the intelligence that the lady was “a slap-up gal in a bang-up chariot.”

Rumty himself, with his pen behind his ear under his rusty hat, arrived at the carriage-door in a breathless condition, and had been fairly lugged into the vehicle by his cravat and embraced almost unto choking, before he recognized his daughter. “My dear child!” he then panted, incoherently. “Good gracious me! What a lovely woman you are! I thought you had been unkind and forgotten your mother and sister.”

“I have just been to see them, Pa dear.”

“Oh! and how — how did you find your mother?” asked R. W., dubiously.

“Very disagreeable, Pa, and so was Lavvy.”

“They are sometimes a little liable to it,” observed the patient cherub; “but I hope you made allowances, Bella, my dear?”

“No. I was disagreeable too, Pa; we were all of us disagreeable together. But I want you to come and dine with me somewhere, Pa.”

“Why, my dear, I have already partaken of a — if one might mention such an article in this superb chariot — of a — Saveloy,” replied R. Wilfer, modestly dropping his voice on the word, as he eyed the canary- coloured fittings.

“Oh! That’s nothing, Pa!”

“Truly, it ain’t as much as one could sometimes wish it to be, my dear,” he admitted, drawing his hand across his mouth. “Still, when circumstances over which you have no control, interpose obstacles between yourself and Small Germans, you can’t do better than bring a contented mind to hear on” — again dropping his voice in deference to the chariot — “Saveloys!”

“You poor good Pa! Pa, do, I beg and pray, get leave for the rest of the day, and come and pass it with me!”

“Well, my dear, I’ll cut back and ask for leave.”

“But before you cut back,” said Bella, who had already taken him by the chin, pulled his hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her old way, “do say that you are sure I am giddy and inconsiderate, but have never really slighted you, Pa.”

“My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise observe,” her father delicately hinted, with a glance out at window, “that perhaps it might he calculated to attract attention, having one’s hair publicly done by a lovely woman in an elegant turn-out in Fenchurch Street?”