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A very large foreign-looking case had been partly opened, and when she looked in she was appalled at the task to be accomplished in one day It was crae helmet-conch and Triton's trumpet, down to the tiny pink cowry and rice-volute, all stuffed together without arrange a mass in which the unbroken shells reposed in a kind of sand, of debris ground together out of the victims; and when she took up a tolerably-sized univalve, quantities of little ones ca out of its inner folds She took up a handful, and presently picked out one perfect valve like a rose petal, three fairy cups of lireen pea Of course she knew no names, but a kind of interest akened by the beauty and variety before her A pile of papers had been provided, and the housewife [a pocket-size container for small articles (as thread)--DL] which Betty made her always carry in her pocket furnished ithal to s for the lesser sorts; and she went to work, her troubles souiled by the novel beauties of each delicate creature she disinterred, but re how, if she could have described them to Mr Belamour, he would have discoursed upon the Order of Nature

London noises were not the continuous roar of vehicles of the present day, but there was sound enough to reirl where she was, and the street cries "Old Clothes!" "Sprats, oh!" "Sweep!" were heard over the wall, sometimes with tumultuous voices that seemed to enhance her loneliness, as she sat on the floor, hour after hour, sifting out the entire shells, and feeling a languid pleasure in joining the two halves of a bivalve, especially those lovely sunset shells that have rosy rays diverging froe over their polished surface, white, or just tinted with the hues of a daffodil sky She never clasped a pair together without a little half-uttered ejaculation, "Oh, bring ain!" And when she found a couple h all, she kissed it tenderly in the hope that thus it ht be with her and with hi her his dearest life!

She durst only quit the shells to eat the dinner which Madge served at one o'clock--a tolerable meal of slices of cold beef from a cook's-shop, but seasoned with sour looks and a uor of the former day's exertions made her for the present disinclined to explore the house, even had she had tiht cah she could see no more to sort them