Ellen, very anxious to get rid of her, replied,

"You were most welcome, and I was going to beg you, Miss Babie, as I am much hurried, to let me see you into a coach on my account, as you honour me by considering yourself my guest, and as this accident, which is no fault of mine, renders the carriage unsafe.”

"Weel, I have na objection to that." Just then a very showy blazoned patent safety cab passed by, and the driver hailed Babie. like the luke of that conveyance weel enoo," said Babie. "Mak a bargain wi' him, my dear, not only to tak me hame, but to tak me to the Zoological Gardens. And I'll trouble you to lend me a shilling, for I've spent a' my siller in the city, but I've got my pennyworth for my penny, I'm thinking."

Ellen lent Babie half-a-crown, and paid the cabman his fare in advance. She then took leave of Babie, trusting that in a patent safety cab she could come to no harm, and strongly recommending her not to go too near the monkeys, the cockatoos, or in short any of the

animals in the Zoological Gardens; she would fain have persuaded her not to go, but Babie, as her sister had said, was mad after any kind of gaiety; and, full of spirits, she drove away.

"That's a reg'lar queer un, my lady, is that ere old forriner," said fighting Jem. "She on't see nothing at the Zoological Gardins half so outlandish as herself."

Ellen laughed, for she thought so too. She bade Jem drive her to St. James's Square, causing her uncle's carriage to follow, lest its preceding her should cause any alarm.

She found her absence had caused much surprise; but the horses escaped unhurt, and the footman had arrived from the Saracen's Head but little injured.

Mr. Lindsay was the first to laugh at Ellen's ludicrous account of her morning's adventures, and those of the "flighty, flauntering lassie, Babie." As for fighting Jem, having not only received his fare, and an extra half-crown, but a good luncheon, he decided that Ellen "wor reg'lar tip-top gentry, and he only wished he could meet wi' such a cus

tomer every morning of his life; he shouldn't care for the homnibushes then, but as it was, he wished 'em all turned into 'earses for them as went in 'em, and them as drove 'em, and there warn't a man o' spirit on the stand as didn't wish the same."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"One hates an author, that's all author, fellows,
In foolscap uniforms turned up with ink.
So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous;

One don't know what to say to them or think,
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows.

Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs e'en the pink
Are preferable to these shreds of paper,

These unquenched snuffings of the midnight taper."
BYRON.

We have said that there was something peculiarly mysterious in Grunter's behaviour, that he ceased to correct Annie, and seemed like a man preoccupied by some great design. And so he was!.... his intimacy with Fitzcribb had awakened a literary ambition in the heart of the old usher. He longed to see

himself in print.

a lion among men.

He longed to walk forth

He was too egotistical

a character to be able to conceal the dar

ling wish of his heart. Fitzcribb, clever, shrewd, poor, and the father of a large family, fanned the flame, which he hoped would be the means of making his own hearth burn the brighter. He concentrated Grunter's vague aspirings into one point, and suggested, with an art that made Grunter mistake those suggestions for conceptions of his own.

Fitzcribb had had much practice in the art of book-making, but the public was aware of him, and began to look upon him as a mere retailer; but who had ever heard of Ebenezer Grunter? there was something abstruse in the

very name.

Fitzcribb then contrived to mount old Grunter on the well-known Pegasus from which he had been thrown, and himself to amble along on a common hack by his sidein short, he for a time gave up all daring enterprise in the literary line, and betook himself entirely to writing in periodicals, correcting manuscripts, seeing works of other authors through the press, and in fact became a literary drudge.