| Room No. 11, New York. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------
---+ | | | Henry L. Stephens, | | | | artist, | | | | No. 160 Fulton street, | | | | new York. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the punchinello publishing company, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

* * * * *

The mystery of Mr. E. DROOD,

An adaptation.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR

CHAPTER XXVI.

For better, for worse.

Miss CARROWTHERS having gone out with Mrs. SKAMMERHORN to skirmish with the world of dry-goods clerks for one of those alarming sacrifices in feminine apparel which woman unselfishly, yet never needlessly, is always making, Flora sat alone in her new home, working the latest beaded pin-cushion of her useful life.  Frequently experiencing the truth of the adage, that as you sew so shall you rip, the fair young thing was passing half her valuable time in ripping out the mistaken stitches she had made in the other half; and the severe moral discipline thus endured, made her mad, as equivalent vexation would have made a man the reverse of that word.  Flippant social satirists cannot dwell with sufficient sarcasm upon the difference between the invincible amiability affected by artless girls in society and their occasional bitterness of aspect in the privacy of home; never stopping to reflect that there are sore private trials for these industrious young crochet creatures in which the thread of the most equable female existence is necessarily worsted.  Miss Potts, then, although looking up from her trying worsted occupation at the servant who entered with a rather snappish expression of countenance, was guilty of no particularly hypocritical assumption in at once suffering her features to relax into a sweetly pensive smile upon learning that there was a gentleman to see her in the parlor.

“‘Montgomery pendragon,’” she softly read from the card presented.  “Is he alone, Bridget, dear?”