Still panting, Miss POTTS paid and discharged this friendly man, and, weariedly entering the building, followed the signs up-stairs to her guardian’s office.

After knocking several times at the right door without reply, she turned the knob, and entered so softly that the venerable lawyer was not aroused from the slumber into which he had fallen in his chair by the window.  With a copy of Putnam’s Magazine still grasped in his honest right hand, good Mr. DIBBLE slept like a drugged person; nor could the young girl awaken him until, by a happy inspiration, she had snatched away the monthly and cast it through the casement.

“Am I dreaming?” exclaimed the aged man, when thus suddenly rescued from his deadly lethargy at last “Is that you, my dear; or are you your late mother?”

“I am your ridiculously unhappy ward,” answered the Flowerpot, tremulously.  “Oh, poor, dear, absurd EDDY!”

“And you have come here all alone?”

“Yes; and to escape being married to EDDY’S perfectly hateful uncle, who has the same as ordered me to become his utterly disgusted bride.  Oh, why is it, why is it, that I must be thus persecuted by young men without property!  Why is it that perfectly horrid madmen on salaries are allowed to claim me as their own!”

“My dear,” cried the old lawyer, leading her to a chair, and striving to speak soothingly, “if Mr. BUMSTEAD desires to marry you he must indeed be insane.  Such a man ought really to be confined,” he continued, pacing thoughtfully up and down the room.  “This must have been the idea that was already turning his brain when—­bless my soul!—­he actually intimated, first, that I, and then, that Mr. SIMPSON, had killed his nephew!”

“He thinks, now, that I, or MAGNOLIA PENDRAGON, may have done it,—­the hateful creature!” said FLORA, passionately.

“I see, I see,” assented Mr. DIBBLE, nodding.  “When he has you in his head, my dear, he himself must clearly be out of it.  You shall stay here and take tea with me, and then I will take you to FRENCH’S Hotel for your accommodation during the night.”

It was a sight to see him tenderly help her off with her bonnet; and suggestive to hear him say, that if a man could only take off his brains as easily as a woman hers, what a relief it would be to him occasionally.  It was curious to see him peep into her bottle-filled satchel, with an old man’s freedom; and to hear him audibly wonder thereat, whether, after all, men were any more addicted than women to the social glass when they wanted to put a better face on affairs.  And, after the waiter bringing him toast and tea from a neighboring restaurant had brought an additional slice and cup for the guest, it was pleasant to behold him smiling across the office-table at that guest, and encouraging her to eat as much as she would if a member of his sex were not looking.

“It must be absurdly ridiculous to stay here all alone, as you do, sir,” observed FLORA.