’Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,
   Here’s my work while I’m alive;
   Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,
   Here’s my work when I am dead.

   ’Lizzy Simpkins.  Fear God.  Honour the King.

   ’Aged 11 years.

‘’Tis hers,’ he said to himself.  ‘Heavens, how I like that name!’

Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to Zenobia would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came again upon the door; and the minister started as her face appeared yet another time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious would have refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his feelings by her seductive eyes.

’Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of your cold?’

The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-chastisement.  ‘No, I thank you,’ he said firmly; ’it is not necessary.  I have never been used to one in my life, and it would be giving way to luxury too far.’

‘Then I won’t insist,’ she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing instantly.

Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had chosen to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out of bed and endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days.  However, he consoled himself with what was in truth a rare consolation for a budding lover, that he was under the same roof with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take a poetical view of the term lodger; and that he would certainly see her on the morrow.

The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone.  He had never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did that day, and punctually at eight o’clock, after a short walk, to reconnoitre the premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling.  Breakfast passed, and Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came voluntarily as on the night before to inquire if there were other wants which he had not mentioned, and which she would attempt to gratify.  He was disappointed, and went out, hoping to see her at dinner.  Dinner time came; he sat down to the meal, finished it, lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were at that moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him by appointment.  It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he resolved to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water should be introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like all the hens in Christendom.  But nothing could disguise the fact that it was a queer business; and his countenance fell when he thought how much more his mind was interested in that matter than in his serious duties.