undertake to train up some youth in polite letters, and humane learning—but I cannot—I cannot—I have yet a task to perform."—
"No, Mr Sampson, my wishes are not so ambitious. I have no son, and my only daughter, I presume, you would not consider as a fit pupil."
"Of a surety, no. Nathless, it was I who did educate Miss Lucy in all useful learning,—albeit it was the housekeeper who did teach her those unprofitable exercises of hemming and shaping."
"Well, sir, it is of Miss Lucy I meant to speak—you have, I presume, no recollection of me?"
Sampson, always sufficiently absent in mind, neither remembered the astrologer of past years, nor even the stranger who had taken his patron's part against Glossin, so much had his friend's sudden death embroiled his ideas.
"Well, that does not signify—I am an old acquaintance of the late Mr Bertram,
