Seraphina Popps was the daughter of Mr. Hezekiah Popps, a highly
respectable pawnbroker, residing in ---- Street, Bloomsbury. Being an only
child, from her earliest infancy she wanted for 0, as everything had been
made ready to her [Symbol: hand hand].

She grew up as most little girls do, who live long enough, and became the
universal ![1] of all who knew her, for

"None but herself could be her ||."[2]

Amongst the most devoted of her admirers was Julian Fitzorphandale.
Seraphina was not insensible to the worth of Julian Fitzorphandale; and
when she received from him a letter, asking permission to visit her, she
felt some difficulty in replying to his ?[3]; for, at this very critical
.[4], an unamiable young man, named Augustus St. Tomkins, who possessed
considerable £. _s._ _d._ had become a suitor for her [Symbol: hand]. She
loved Fitzorphandale +[5] St. Tomkins, but the former was [Symbol: empty]
of money; and Seraphina, though sensitive to an extreme, was fully aware
that a competency was a very comfortable "appendix."

She seized her pen, but found that her mind was all 6's and 7's. She spelt
Fitzorphandale, P-h-i-t-z; and though she commenced ¶[6] after ¶, she never
could come to a "finis." She upbraided her unlucky * *, either for making
Fitzorphandale so poor, or St. Tomkins so ugly, which he really was. In
this dilemma we must leave her at present.

Although Augustus St. Tomkins was a [Symbol: Freemason][7], he did not
possess the universal benevolence which that ancient order inculcates; but
revolving in his mind the probable reasons for Seraphina's hesitation, he
came to this conclusion: she either loved him -[8] somebody else, or she