Good night!'

Mr. Crisparkle goes in, with the hat that has so easily, so almost
imperceptibly, acquired the right to be hung up in his hall; hangs
it up; and goes thoughtfully to bed.



CHAPTER IX--BIRDS IN THE BUSH



Rosa, having no relation that she knew of in the world, had, from
the seventh year of her age, known no home but the Nuns' House, and
no mother but Miss Twinkleton. Her remembrance of her own mother
was of a pretty little creature like herself (not much older than
herself it seemed to her), who had been brought home in her
father's arms, drowned. The fatal accident had happened at a party
of pleasure. Every fold and colour in the pretty summer dress, and
even the long wet hair, with scattered petals of ruined flowers
still clinging to it, as the dead young figure, in its sad, sad
beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed indelibly in Rosa's
recollection. So were the wild despair and the subsequent bowed-
down grief of her poor young father, who died broken-hearted on the
first anniversary of that hard day.

The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the soothing of his year of
mental distress by his fast friend and old college companion,
Drood: who likewise had been left a widower in his youth. But he,
too, went the silent road into which all earthly pilgrimages merge,