village, and Miss Dolly to stare at the boats going out."

"Then I may speak a word for once at ease, Mr. Swipes, though the Lord

alone knows what a load is on my tongue. It requires a fine gardener,

being used to delicacy, to enter into half the worry we have to put up

with. Heroes of the Nile, indeed, and bucklers of the country! Why, he

could not buckle his own shoe, and Jenny Shanks had to do it for him.

Not that I blame him for having one arm, and a brave man he is to have

lost it, but that he might have said something about the things I got

up at a quarter to five every morning to make up for him. For cook is

no more than a smoke-jack, Mr. Swipes; if she keeps the joint turning,

that's as much as she can do."

"And a little too fond of good beer, I'm afeard," replied Mr. Swipes,

having emptied his pot. "Men's heads was made for it, but not women's,

till they come to superior stations in life. But, oh, Mrs. Cloam, what a

life we lead with the crotchets of they gentry!"

"It isn't that so much, Mr. Swipes, if only there was any way of giving

satisfaction. I wish everybody who is born to it to have the very best

of everything, likewise all who have fought up to it. But to make all

the things and have nothing made of them, whether indigestion or want

of appetite, turns one quite into the Negroes almost, that two or three

people go on with."

"I don't look at what he hath aten or left," Mr. Swipes made answer,

loftily; "that lieth between him and his own stommick. But what hath a'

left for me, ma'am? He hath looked out over the garden when he pleased,

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