"You must do your part, Tab," said her father—"we'll do ours. He'll bite, you may depend on it, if you manage well!"
"What sort of a looking young man is he, dear pa?" inquired Miss Tag-rag, blushing, and her heart fluttering very fast.
"Oh, you must have seen him, sweetest"——
"How should I ever notice any one of the lots of young men at the shop, pa?—I don't at all know him."
"Well—he's the handsomest, most genteel-looking young fellow I ever came across; he's long been an ornament to my establishment, for his good looks and civil and obliging manners—quite a treasure! You should have seen how he took with the ladies of rank always!"——
"Dear me," interrupted Mrs. Tag-rag, anxiously addressing her daughter, "I hope, Tabby, that Miss Nix will send home your lilac-colored frock by next Sunday!"
"If she don't, ma, I'll take care she never makes anything more for me, that's poz!" replied Miss Tag-rag, earnestly.
"We'll call there to-morrow, love, and hurry her on," said her mother; and from that moment until eleven o'clock, when the amiable and interesting trio retired to rest, nothing was talked of but the charming Titmouse, and the good fortune he so richly deserved, and how long the courtship was likely to last. Mrs. Tag-rag, who, for the last month or so, had always remained on her knees before getting into bed, for at least ten minutes, on this eventful evening compressed her prayers, I regret to say, into one minute and a half's time, (as for Tag-rag, a hardened heathen, for all he had taken to hearing Mr. Horror, he always tumbled prayerless into bed, the moment he was undressed;) while, for once in a way, Miss Tag-rag, having taken only five minutes to put her hair into papers, popped into bed directly she had blown the candle out, without saying any prayers—or even thinking of finishing the novel which lay under her pillow, and which she had got on the sly from the circulating library of the late Miss Snooks. For several hours she lay in a delicious revery, imagining herself become Mrs. Tittlebat Titmouse, riding about Clapham in a handsome carriage, going to the play every night; and what would the three Miss Knippses say when they heard of it?—they'd burst. And such a handsome man, too!
She sank, at length, into unconsciousness, amid a soft confusion of glistening white satin—favors—bridesmaids—Mrs. Tittlebat Tit—Tit—Tit—Tit—mouse.
Titmouse, about half-past nine o'clock on the ensuing morning, was sitting in his little room in a somewhat troubled humor, musing on many things, and little imagining the intense interest he had excited in the feelings of the amiable occupants of Satin Lodge, when a knock at his door startled him out of his revery. Guess his amazement to see, on opening it, Mr. Tag-rag!