In the quiet town of Cloisterham, in England, in a boarding-school, once lived a beautiful girl named Rosa Bud—an amiable, wilful, winning, whimsical little creature whom every one called Rosebud. She was an orphan. Her mother had been drowned when she was only seven years old and her father had died of grief on the first anniversary of that day.

Her father\'s friend and college mate, a Mr. Drood, had comforted his last hours, and they had agreed between them that when Rosebud was old enough she should marry Mr. Drood\'s son Edwin, then a little boy. Her father put this wish in his will, as did Mr. Drood, who died also soon after his friend, and so Rosebud and Edwin Drood grew up knowing that, though not bound in any way, each was intended for the other. So it came about that, while if they had been let alone they might have fallen in love naturally, yet as it was they were always shy and ill at ease with one another. Yet they liked each other, too.

Rosebud\'s guardian was a Mr. Grewgious, an[Pg 442] arid, sandy man who looked as if he might be put in a grinding-mill and turned out first-class snuff. He had scanty hair like a yellow fur tippet, and deep notches in his forehead, and was very near-sighted. He seemed to have been born old, so that when he came to London to call on Rosebud amid all the school-girls he used to say he felt like a bear with the cramp. Grewgious, however, under his oddity had a very tender heart, particularly for Rosebud, whose mother he had been secretly in love with before she married. But he had grown up a dry old bachelor, living in gloomy rooms in London, and no one would have guessed him ever to have been a bit romantic.

The school Rosebud attended was called Nun\'s House. Miss Twinkleton, the prim old maid who managed it, termed it a "Seminary for Young Ladies." It had a worn front, with a shining brass door-plate that made it look at a distance like a battered old beau with a big new eye-glass stuck in his blind eye. Here Rosebud lived a happy life, the pet of the whole seminary, till she was a young lady.

Cloisterham was a dull, gray town with an ancient cathedral, which was so cold and dark and damp that looking into its door was like looking down the throat of old Father Time. The cathedral had a fine choir, which sang at all the services............