"Its a great piece of luck, ma'am," said Mrs Belfield, "that you should
happen to come here, of a holiday! If my son had not been at home, I
should have been ready to cry for a week: and you might come any day
the year through but a Sunday, and not meet with him any more than if
he had never a home to come to."

"If Mr Belfield's home-visits are so periodical," said Cecilia, "it
must be rather less, than more, difficult to meet with him."

"Why you know, ma'am," answered Mrs Belfield, "to-day is a red-letter
day, so that's the reason of it."

"A red-letter day?"

"Good lack, madam, why have not you heard that my son is turned book-
keeper?"

Cecilia, much surprised, looked at Belfield, who, colouring very high,
and apparently much provoked by his mother's loquacity, said, "Had Miss
Beverley not heard it even now, madam, I should probably have lost with
her no credit."

"You can surely lose none, Sir," answered Cecilia, "by an employment
too little pleasant to have been undertaken from any but the most
laudable motives."

"It is not, madam, the employment," said he, "for which I so much blush
as for the person employed--for _myself_! In the beginning of the
winter you left me just engaged in another business, a business with