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362 they scarcely merited the interest I felt in their fate. But we were not deceived—were we, Vance?"

"Vance. "No; the little girl—what was her name? Sukey? Sally?—Sophy—true, Sophy—had something about her extremely prepossessing, besides her pretty face; and, in spite of that horrid cotton print, I shall never forget it."

. "Her face! Nor I. I see it still before me."

. "Her cotton print! I see it still before me! But I must not be ungrateful. Would not believe it, that little portrait, which cost me three pounds, has made, I don't say my fortune, but my fashion?"

. "How! You had the heart to sell it?"

. "No; I kept it as a study for young female heads— ' with variations,' as they say in music. It was by my female heads that I become the fashion; every order I have contains the condition—' But be sure, one of your sweet female heads, Mr. Vance.' My female heads are as necessary to my canvas as a white horse to Wouvermans'. Well, that child, who cost me three pounds, is the original of them all. Commencing as a Titania, she has been in turns a ' Psyche,' a * Beatrice Cence,' a ' Minna/ ' A Portrait of a Nobleman's Daughter,' ' Burns's Mary in Heaven,' 'The Young Gleaner,' and ' Sabrina fair,' in Milton's Comus. I have led that child through all history, sacred and profane. I have painted her in all costumes (her own cotton print excepted). My female heads are my glory—even the Times^ critic allows that! ' Mr. Vance, there, is inimitable! a type of childlike grace peculiarly his own, etc., etc' I'll lend you the article."

. "And shall we never again see the original darling Sophy? You will laugh, Vance, but I have been heart-proof against all young ladies. If ever I marry, my wife must have Sophy's eyes! In America!"

. "Let us hope by this time happily married to a Yankee! Yankees marry girls in their teens, and don't ask for dowries. Married to a Yankee! not a doubt of it! a Yankee who chaws, whittles, and keeps a ' store '!"

. "Monster! Hold your tongue! Apropos of marriage, why are you still single?"

. "Because I have no wish to be doubled up! Moreover, man is like a napkin, the more neatly the housewife doubles him, the more carefully she lays him on the shelf. Neither can a man once doubled know how often he may be doubled. Not only his wife folds him in two, but every child quarters him into a new double, till what was a wide and hand-