The silk was wound at last, the coat repaired.  Dick with difficulty concealed the growing stiffness of his shoulders, while Dolly turned up the lamp, which bluntly hinted bedtime, and Mrs. Ward successfully devoured six gapes behind her hand, but was detected in the seventh by Mr. Bopp, who glanced at the clock, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and, with a hurried “goot-night,” made for the door without the least idea whither he was going.  Piloted by Dick, he was installed in the “best chamber,” where his waking dreams were enlivened by a great fire, and his sleeping ones by an endless succession of skeins, each rapturously concluded in the style of Sam Weller when folding carpets with the pretty maid.

“I tell you, Dolly, it won’t do, and I’m not going to have it.”

“Oh, indeed; and how will you help it, you absurd boy?”

“Why, if you don’t stop it, I’ll just say to Bopp,—­’Look here, my dear fellow; this sister of mine is a capital girl, but she will flirt and’”—­

“And it’s a family failing, Dick,” cut in Dolly.

“Not a bit of it.  I shall say, ’Take care of your heart, Bopp, for she has a bad habit of playing battle-door and shuttle-cock with these articles; and, though it may be very good fun for a time, it makes them ache when they get a last knock and are left to lie in a corner.’”

“What eloquence!  But you’d never dare to try it on Mr. Bopp; and I shouldn’t like to predict what would happen to you if you did.”

“If you say ‘dare,’ I’ll do it the first minute I see him.  As for consequences, I don’t care that for ’em;” and Dick snapped his fingers with an aspect of much disdain.  But something in his sister’s face suggested the wisdom of moderation, and moved him to say, less like a lord of creation, and more like a brother who privately adored his sister, but of course was not going to acknowledge such a weakness,—­

“Well, but soberly, now, I wish you wouldn’t plague Bopp; for it’s evident to me that he is hit; and from the way you’ve gone on these two months, what else was to be expected?  Now, as the head of the family,—­you needn’t laugh, for I am,—­I think I ought to interfere; and so I put it to you,—­do you like him, and will you have him? or are you merely amusing yourself, as you have done ever since you were out of pinafores?  If you like him, all serene.  I’d rather have him for a brother than any one I know, for he’s a regular trump though he is poor; but if you don’t, I won’t have the dear old fellow floored just because you like to see it done.”

It may here be remarked that Dolly quite glowed to hear her brother praise Mr. Bopp, and that she indorsed every word with mental additions of double warmth; but Dick had begun all wrong, and, manlike, demanded her confidence before she had made up her mind to own she had any to bestow; therefore nothing came of it but vexation of spirit; for it is a well-known fact that, on some subjects, if boys will tease, girls will fib, and both maintain that it is right.  So Dolly whetted her feminine weapon, and assumed a lofty superiority.