Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL Mv 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 straightforward, that nobody could have had the slightest suspicion of all not being quite straightforward regarding them. All this, however, was nothing to the difficulty he found after breakfast, when he wag told to assist in the putting up of a large order for a country-shop. What room had he in his mind for 6 Ibs. of yellow ochre, and 2 Ibs. 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 warehouse, 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 grandmother, 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 whomshe had said that the old woman often quarrelled ? and if so, why was she called Bannennan ? Was that her mother's name ? and if so, why, then, was the old woman called Bellamy ? He could not understand these things. One thing, however, he could very well understand, and that was, that he was desperately in love; should nev...