All this time her hands were busy at her
lace-pillow. As they still continued so, and as
there was a kind of substitute for conversation
in the click and play of its pegs, Barbox
Brothers took the opportunity of observing her.
He guessed her to be thirty. The charm
of her transparent face and large bright brown
eyes, was, not that they were passively resigned,
but that they were actively and thoroughly
cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their
own thinness alone might have besought
compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that
made mere compassion an unjustifiable assumption
of superiority, and an impertinence.

He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards
his, and he directed his towards the prospect,
saying: " Beautiful indeed!"

"Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had
a fancy that I would like to sit up, for once,
only to try how it looks to an erect head. But
what a foolish fancy that would be to encourage!
It cannot look more lovely to any one than it
does to me."

Her eyes were turned to it as she spoke,
with most delighted admiration and enjoyment.
There was not a trace in it of any sense of
deprivation.

"And those threads of railway, with their
puffs of smoke and steam changing places so fast,
make it so lively for me," she went on. "I
think of the number of people who can go where
they wish, on their business, or their pleasure;
I remember that the puffs make signs to me
that they are actually going while I look;
and that enlivens the prospect with abundance
of company, if I want company. There is the
great Junction, too. I don't see it under the
foot of the hill, but I can very often hear it, and
I always know it is there. It seems to join me,
in a way, to I don't know how many places and
things that I shall never see."

With an abashed kind of idea that it might have
already joined himself to something he had never
seen, he said constrainedly: " Just so."

"And so you see, sir," pursued Phoebe, " I
am not the invalid you thought me, and I am
very well off indeed."

"You have a happy disposition," said Barbox
Brothers: perhaps with a slight excusatory
touch for his own disposition.

"Ah! But you should know my father," she
replied. " His is the happy disposition!——Don't
mind, sir!" For his reserve took the alarm at a
step upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he
would be set down for a troublesome intruder.
"This is my father coming."

The door opened, and the father paused there.

"Why, Lamps!" exclaimed Barbox Brothers,
starting from his chair. "How do you do,
Lamps ':"

To which, Lamps responded: " The gentleman
for Nowhere! How do you DO, sir?"

And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration
and surprise of Lamps's daughter.

"I have looked you up, half a dozen times
since that night," said Barbox Brothers, but
have never found you."

"So I've heerd on, sir, so I've heerd on,"
returned Lamps. " It's your being noticed so
often down at the Junction, without taking any
train, that has begun to get you the name among
us of the gentleman for Nowhere. No offence
in my having called you by it when took by surprise,
I hope, sir?"

"None at all. It's as good a name for me as
any other you could call me by. But may I ask
you a question in the corner here?"

Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from
his daughter's couch, by one of the buttons of
his velveteen jacket.

"Is this the bedside where you sing your
songs?"

Lamps nodded.

The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on
the shoulder, and they faced about again.

"Upon my word, my dear," said Lamps then
to his daughter, looking from her to her visitor,
"it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought
acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if
this gentleman will excuse me) take a rounder."

Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this
meant, by pulling out his oily handkerchief
rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself
an elaborate smear, from behind the right
ear, up the cheek, across the forehead, and down
the other cheek to behind his left ear. After
this operation, he shone exceedingly.

"It's according to my custom when par-
ticular warmed up by any agitation, sir," he
offered by way of apology. " And really, I am
throwed into that state of amaze by finding you
brought acquainted with Phoebe, that I——that I
think I will, if you'll excuse me, take another
rounder." Which he did, seeming to be greatly
restored by it.

They were now both standing by the side of
her couch, and she was working at her lace-pillow.
"Your daughter tells me," said Barbox
Brothers, still in a half reluctant shamefaced
way, " that she never sits up."

"No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her
mother (who died when she was a year and two
months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as
she had never mentioned to me that she was
subject to fits, they couldn't be guarded against.
Consequently, she dropped the baby when took,
and this happened."

"It was very wrong of her," said Barbox
Brothers, with a knitted brow, " to marry you,
making a secret of her infirmity."

"Well, sir," pleaded Lamps, in behalf of the
long-deceased. "You see, Phoebe and me, we have
talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such
a number on us has our infirmities, what with fits,
and what with misfits, of one sort and another,
that if we confessed to  'em all before we got
married, most of us might never get married."

"Might not that be for the better?"

"Not in this case, sir," said Phoebe, giving
her hand to her father.

"No, not in this case, sir," said her father,
patting it between his own.

"You correct me" returned Barbox Brothers,
with a blush; " and I must look so like a Brute,