in order and prepare them for the next comers,
I stand perfectly aghast at the state of things
presented to my view, and feel almost
incapable of doing anything. What revelations
take place then! What horrors are disclosed
when I open the doors of my favourite rosewood
cabinet or cheffonier. The wretches have
used it as a larder. Bits of bacon, skins of
sucked gooseberries, a cup of paste, which I
made for them when they first came, for the
children's kite,—a cup of paste, I say, three
weeks old, with a forest of mould growing six
inches high out of it; crusts of bread that
you might build a house with, they are so hard;
and butter, which, as I have before hinted, is
their great stronghold, butter over every blessed
thing in the place. Everything looks spoilt.
The sofa on which both Mr. and Mrs. Muddle
are always walloping down with a bang, looks
dragged out of all shape, the easy-chair has lost
a castor, and there is such a combination of fusty
smells pervading the apartment, that if the next
lodgers should happen to be of the neat order
and begin sniffing, I should most certainly lose
the benefit of their patronage.*

* I have myself been invited to inspect my
landlady's apartments on their being vacated by such
lodgers as those just described, and I can vouch for
the accuracy of her statement.—J. B.

So I should, most probably, if the severe
lodgers were to drop in upon me at that time.
Indeed, between these and the neat lodgers
there is a resemblance so strong that the two
classes can hardly be kept quite separate. The
severe lodger is extremely suspicious, and has
it impressed upon his mind that I am going
to cheat and deceive him in all sorts of possible
and impossible ways. He will have everything
down in black and white, and draws out an
agreement like a lease when he enters my
apartments for a single week. Of all the
severe lodgers that I have ever met with, the
most severe are military officers on half-pay.
There is one who comes to my lodgings pretty
often, accompanied by his wife, a grown-up
daughter, and his son, a lad of about fourteen.
Captain Sharp, which is this gentleman's name,
never comes down to Bastings in the season.
He waits till it is over, or just on the wane, and
then he thinks he ought to be able to make any
bargain he likes. "Now, Mrs. Bee-flat," he
says, coming in alone—he never goes to an
hotel, and has left his family sitting on the boxes
at the station while he looks for apartments
—"Now, Mrs. Bee-flat," says the captain, "here
I am, you see, come down at the dead season of
the year—I see there are nothing but bills up
in every house in Bastings."

After this beginning I know what is coming,
and sure enough it does come. The captain
wants my best rooms—for it is one of the
characteristics of these economical gentry that they
always want the best of everything—he wants
my four best rooms for a price so ridiculous that
I really cannot bring myself to mention it;
and, what is worst of all, is, he won't take no
for an answer. He sets to work to prove to
me that he understands my business better than
I do myself. He inquires what my rent is,
makes a calculation how much what he
proposes to give will contribute towards it, how
much I shall lose by the lodgings remaining
empty, with the interest and compound interest
on this loss, all estimated to a penny. Well,
it generally ends in my giving in, and then off
he goes for the family, and returns with a truck,
and a porter, and all his goods and chattels.
There is a row with the porter at the door.
There are nothing else but rows at the door
all the time the captain is with me. He
quarrels with all the tradespeople, and has at
last to go into distant parts of the town for
provisions, and he and the boy are always
returning to the house laden with parcels. He
will even sometimes go out with a carpet-bag
and bring back a leg of mutton in it, done up in
cabbage leaves.

What a life that man leads! He will not let
Mrs. Sharp do anything. He comes into my
kitchen and gives directions how the meat
is to be cooked; and he will often swear that
there were seven bones in the loin of mutton
he purchased, and that only six have come
up to table—daring to hint that I have retained
a chop for myself!

The captain never takes a carriage. He says
walking is better both for his family and himself
than riding; and, as they can't walk for ever, he
has got a large collection of camp-stools, with
one of which each member of the family is armed,
and on which they sit down in a row by the
wayside. I believe they all, with the exception
of the captain himself, detest the sight of these
camp-stools; and I once saw Master Alfred—
the son—give a violent kick to his, in my back
kitchen, out of sight of his papa. Once, indeed,
they went out with donkeys for the ladies, when
the captain (in order that he might not have
to give anything to the guide) said he did not
want a boy with him, and would manage the
donkeys himself. I am almost glad to say that
the donkeys took to kicking on the top of
a high down, miles away from Bastings, and
declined to go any farther; and one of them
actually bit a piece out of the skirt of the
captain's coat; so they didn't take much by that
manœuvre.

The captain will refuse to give anything to
the band that plays before his window, saying
that he dislikes music, but he will have the
window opened while it is there, nevertheless, and
will beat time to the tune almost as if he
enjoyed it. Once I caught him hiding behind
the curtains, and watching with intense delight
the exhibition of Punch, but he would not allow
any of his family to appear at the window, lest
they should be expected to give something to
the showman.

Such are some of the goings on of my severe
lodgers. There is no limit to their notions of
what they have a right to exact from everybody
who comes in contact with them. Woe to me
if the dinner is five minutes behind time. Woe