Make a clean breast of it, Rosanna— make a
clean breast of it!"

The time had been, when my speaking to her
in that way would have brought the tears into
her eyes. I could see no change in them now.

"Yes," she said, "I'll make a clean breast
of it."

"To my lady?" I asked.

"No."

"To Mr. Franklin?"

"Yes; to Mr. Franklin."

I hardly knew what to say to that. She
was in no condition to understand the caution
against speaking to him in private, which Mr.
Franklin had directed me to give her. Feeling
my way, little by little, I only told her Mr.
Franklin had gone out for a walk.

"It doesn't matter," she answered. "I
shan't trouble Mr. Franklin, to-day."

"Why not speak to my lady?" I said. "The
way to relieve your mind is to speak to the
merciful and Christian mistress who has
always been kind to you."

She looked at me for a moment with a grave
and steady attention, as if she was fixing what
I said in her mind. Then she took the broom
out of my hands; and moved off with it slowly,
a little way down the corridor.

"No," she said, going on with her sweeping,
and speaking to herself; "I know a better way
of relieving my mind than that."

"What is it?"

"Please to let me go on with my work."

Penelope followed her, and offered to help
her.

She answered, "No. I want to do my
work. Thank you, Penelope." She looked round
at me. "Thank you, Mr. Betteredge."

There was no moving her— there was nothing
more to be said. I signed to Penelope to come
away with me. We left her, as we had found
her, sweeping the corridor, like a woman in a
dream.

"This is a matter for the doctor to look
into," I said. "It's beyond me."

My daughter reminded me of Mr. Candy's
illness, owing (as you may remember) to the chill
he had caught on the night of the dinner-party.
His assistant— a certain Mr. Ezra Jennings—
was at our disposal, to be sure. But nobody
knew much about him in our parts. He had
been engaged by Mr. Candy, under rather
peculiar circumstances; and, right or wrong, we
none of us liked him or trusted him. There
were other doctors at Frizinghall. But they
were strangers to our house; and Penelope
doubted, in Rosanna's present state, whether
strangers might not do her more harm than
good.

I thought of speaking to my lady. But,
remembering the heavy weight of anxiety which
she already had on her mind, I hesitated to add
to all the other vexations this new trouble.
Still, there was a necessity for doing something.
The girl's state was, to my thinking, downright
alarming— and my mistress ought to be
informed of it. Unwillingly enough, I went to
her sitting-room. No one was there. My lady
was shut up with Miss Rachel. It was impossible
for me to see her till she came out again.

I waited in vain till the clock on the front
staircase struck the quarter to two. Five
minutes afterwards, I heard my name called, from
the drive outside the house. I knew the voice
directly. Sergeant Cuff had returned from
Frizinghall.

LOCOMOTION IN LONDON.

FORTY-TWO years are but a small space of
time in the history of a great nation or a great
city, though they form a large slice in the life
of a man who scarcely hopes to live beyond
seventy. But forty-two years, short as they
are, have operated very great changes in the
huge assemblage of cities, boroughs, towns, and
villages, which is called the British metropolis.
In the year 1826 the population of this busy
hive— which even then was considered to be so
immense and overgrown as to be a wonder of
the world— did not much exceed a million;
it did not reach a million and a half until
five years later. It now reaches nearly
three millions and a half, and is daily
increasing. No city in the world, not even in the
United States, where cities seem to spring up
in a night like gourds or mushrooms, has grown
so rapidly. Men, still in the prime of life
remember when the sites of Belgravia andTyburnia
were marshes, meadows, and market-gardens;
when sheep and cattle grazed in the green fields
of what is now Camdenia; when Kentish (originally
Cantelow's) Town was a remote village;
when Trafalgar-square, the National Gallery,
and the lordly clubs of Pall Mall and St.
James's-street were unbuilt and unimagined;
when Waterloo-bridge— which is now, save
one, the oldest— was the newest metropolitan
bridge over the Thames; when Stevenson
thought a train upon the rail might safely
travel at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and
was considered a crotchety enthusiast for his
pains; and when his majesty's mails, with their
drivers and guards in royal livery, and with
fast-going steeds, the pride of the road,
assembled every evening before the General Post
Office, preparatory to a start to every point of
the compass, carrying their small complement
of passengers and the scanty correspond-
ence of the day. At this time— odd as it may
seem to the fast young men who are now
between twenty and thirty— there were in this
great metropolis neither policemen, cabs, nor
omnibuses.

How the people of London, who happened
to be in a hurry, managed in those early days
to travel from place to place in the great city,
is not very clear. The quickest conveyance to
be procured was a hackney coach, with two
horses— a great, cast-off, lumbering, dirty, shabby
vehicle, perhaps with a royal crown, or a coronet,
and a flaring coat-of-arms upon the panel. The
hackney coach was an old institution, and had