to my servant if she is not up at six o'clock,
and ready with the captain's boots brightly
polished, and his warm water at half-after,
though why he gets up so early it is impossible
to say, as he has nothing to do but make
bargains all day long. Probably he does it out
of aggravation. As to the idea in the mind of
the severe lodger of the amount of broken
victuals which goes down from his table, it is
perfectly incomprehensible. One day I really
did lose all patience about it, and I could not
help saying:

"I'll tell you what, Captain Sharp, the best
way will be for you to have the weights and
scales up-stairs, and then you can weigh the
meat that goes down, and weigh it again when
it comes up next day, and we'd better both
make a note of it, and then we shall be sure."

Altogether, I think the severe lodger is more
trouble than he's worth, and I do really believe
that if the captain shows his clean-shaved face
and his thin figure here this autumn, I shall
decline him. I've no patience with him; I know
he had money with his wife—he'd never have
married her without—and it's stinginess and not
poverty that I complain of. The really poor
are not the severe lodgers, and not one of tnem
will polish a bone like that odious Captain
Sharp.

Just as the severe lodgers resemble the
neat lodgers in many respects, so the
muddling lodger and the easy lodger are also
almost exactly alike. Indeed, so much is this
the case, that these last require no separate
description. Except for their muddling propensities,
they are pleasant people to deal with, and
the only thing I have to complain about is, that
they never know when they are going, and are
always wanting me to let them stop on for
another day or two, or else to let them off at the
half week. But they have agreeable qualities;
they never ask about anything that goes from
table, and if I chose to take advantage—which
of course I never do—I might make a very good
thing of their stay under my roof.

Oh dear me! what a dreadful thing. Here's
Mr. Broadhead gone away to London, sent for
on the sudden from his office, and I haven't near
said all I wanted to say about my lodgers.
What is to be done? Perhaps I could manage
it by myself. At all events, I'll have a try.
There's no harm in that.

I was going to say something about my
respectable lodgers. Of course such lodgers are
dear to every landlady's heart, and little is the
care and anxiety I should have, if such as
Mr. Checquers (which is the head cashier in
Counterfoil's Bank) was the only sort of lodgers
that come into my apartments. Lor! who would
want a reference with such a gentleman as that?
Why, every bit of him is a reference, from the
beautiful smooth hat on his head, to the black
cloth gaiters under his trousers. Talk about
well-ordered minds and regular habits! Up at seven
every morning, and off to take his bath, with his
own towels, mind, and his flesh-brushes and his
comb, and his button-hook for his gaiters, and
his shoe-horn for his shoes, all in a little case
made a'purpose—why, some of my lodgers go
out to bathe, little more than half-dressed, sulky
and half asleep, and come, back looking like
drownded rats, with their hair all of a tangle,
and gaping and yawning and putting off the
finishing of their dressing till after breakfast;
while Mr. Checquers has his "Good morning,
Mrs. B.," as he goes out cheerful and amiable,
and comes out of the machine as he might out
of his dressing-room, fit to take a walk
anywheres, or to meet anybody. Bless the man!
why he makes his own tea for his half-after
eight o'clock breakfast, boiling the water with
a Hetna. Then he sits a little while by the
open window, and perhaps we have a chat as I
clear away the things, and then he orders his
loind of mutton or what not, but always plain
cooking. And many's the hanecdote he has to
tell about the different great and titled visitors
staying in this town or in St. Reynards close
contagious; for he knows 'em all.

And surely it's a credit—equal to having a
clergyman in the house—to see him go out to the
library, where he reads every one of the papers
and the magazines—for he's a great reader; and
only yesterday the young man from that library
says to me, "There ain't a single party in all
Bastings, no, nor St. Reynards neither,
Mrs. B., as takes it out of a library to the extent
which your lodger does; and if newspapers was
wore out in the reading, that gent would be a
loss and not a gain to the governor, as I often
tell him."

With his library and his walk from three to
five, my respectable lodger gets through his
afternoon as a gentleman should, and at half-after
five there he is with his hands washed and his
hair brushed, ready for his loind of mutton, as I
said before, and with his decanter of sherry by
his side like a pictur; and many's the time
that he has said that nobody—nobody as ever
he met with—could make such rice puddings—
which is his second course every day as regular
as the sun—as I could; for he likes them solid
like, and not as some do, all in a swim of milk
and whey.

The band plays every evening on the Parade;
and there after his tea my respectable lodger
takes his walk and makes his observations on
the different visitors who will promenade it up
and down there by the hour. And so with that
and a little more reading, and a glass of cold
brandy-and-water, it gets at last to be half-after
ten, and then there's an end of Mr. Checquers
for that day.

"Ah, sir," I've said to him sometimes when
we part—and he always offers me a glass of
sherry-wine on the last evening of his stay—
"Ah, sir, I should be sorry to see this place
without you; and last year, when you didn't
come down, many's the time I said to them as
knowed me and you, 'Bastings,' I said, 'isn't
Bastings without Mr. Checquers."'

Not that I haven't plenty of other respectable
lodgers, goodness be praised; but still that one