66 A SPOKE IN THE‘WHEEL-

CHAPTER V.
A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL,

My readers may imagine how confusing must
have been all the inquiries which assailed the young
man from Mrs. Osborne during breakfast. “ Well,
and how were the Yates’s? Is he better? and is
John come from Birmingham? And what news
have they from Mrs. Benjamin? Are the children
better? And has Jenny had the measles ?”

Williams was not a young man to be easily dumb-
foundered ; his replies really were all so straight-
forward, that nobody could have had the slightest
suspicion of all not being quite straightforward re-
garding them. ll this, however, was nothing to
the difficulty he found after breakfast, when he was
told to assist in the putting up of a large order for a
country-shop. What room had he in his mind for
6 lbs. of yellow ochre, and 2 lbs. of camomile flowers,
and glue, and lamp-black, and syrup of squills, and
opium ?

“ What, are not those things put up yet?” asked
Mr. Osborne, looking down into the lower ware-
house, as he saw Williams by lamplight, towards
dinner-time, weighing out whitening, which he knew
came fourth in a list of seven-and-twenty articles.
No, indeed! they were not put up. Williams had
thought of nothing all the morning but the fair Jessie,
and her sad family history, and her deaf old grand-
mother, who, after all, was not deaf. He went over
the history, incident by incident, and asked himself
many questions. Who, then, was Jessie's father ?
Was it that Mr. Maxwell, the manager, with whom