Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/374

 SEVERITY OF WINTER. 349

the same time with two silent pupils, yet that it was an intense mental effort, and not long to be sustained.

But what was my woman s mind, which is not able to manage more than one subject at a time, busying itself about on this occasion ? While the observed of all ob servers was uttering those few words, he threw his pen at some distance from him on the table. Could I pos sibly become the owner of that cast-off stylus ? Could I carry it home, to America? Would not my antiquarian friends, who are so rabidly eager for his signature, go distracted with joy over the pen that inscribed it ?

I drew insensibly nearer to the spot where it lay. It was a miserably worn-out pen. He will surely take a better one. Can I not beg it of the clerk ? Can I not even lay my own hand upon it ? A cupidity, heretofore unknown, came over me. Might I not thus imagine how some of Mrs. Fry s poor convict girls felt, when they gloated over their mistresses laces, or other con traband articles ?

But in a shorter time than it has taken to arrest these flying thoughts, yes, in the twinkling of an eye, he seized that coveted old goose-quill, and drove it faster than ever. It is all over. My Lord Brougham s pen will never travel with me to the United States. I felt a twinge of disappointment, more however for my autograph-hunting friends, than for myself. Methought, he did not look amiable, as he sate forcing that pen over the paper. Whereupon I invidiously remembered the circumstance of his once bringing out a new coach in London, with simply the letter B on its pannels, and

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