appointment am I to hold in this undertaking
gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round the neck
and tells me dancing, "You shall be the Public
Gran" and consequently they put upon me just
as much as ever they like and I sit a growling
in my easy-chair.

My dear whether it is that a grown man as
clever as the Major cannot give half his heart and
mind to anything—even a plaything—but must
get into right down earnest with it, whether it is
so or whether it is not so I do not undertake to
say, but Jemmy is far outdone by the serious
and believing ways of the Major in the management
of the United Grand Junction Lirriper
and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line,
"For" says my Jemmy with the sparkling
eyes when it was christened, "we must have a
whole mouthful of name Gran or our dear old
Public" and there the young rogue kissed me,
"won't stump up." So the Public took the shares
—ten at ninepence, and immediately when that
was spent twelve Preference at one-and-sixpence
—and they were all signed by Jemmy and
countersigned by the Major, and between ourselves
much better worth the money than some shares
I have paid for in my time. In the same holidays
the line was made and worked and opened
and ran excursions and had collisions and burst
its boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences
all most regular correct and pretty. The sense of
responsibility entertained by the Major as a military
style of station-master my dear starting the
down train behind time and ringing one of those
little bells that you buy with the little coal-
scuttles off the tray round the man's neck in
the street did him honour, but noticing the
Major of a night when he is writing out his
monthly report to Jemmy at school of the state
of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way
and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the
Major's sideboard and dusted with his own
hands every morning before varnishing his boots)
I notice him as full of thought and care as full
can be and frowning in a fearful manner, but
indeed the Major does nothing by halves as
witness his great delight in going out surveying with
Jemmy when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying
a chain and a measuring tape and driving I don't
know what improvements right through Westminster
Abbey and fully believed in the streets
to be knocking everything upside down by Act
of Parliament. As please Heaven will come to
pass when Jemmy takes to that as a profession!

Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my
head his own youngest brother the Doctor
though Doctor of what I am sure it would be
hard to say unless Liquor, for neither Physic nor
Music nor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper know a
morsel of except continually being summoned to
the County Court and having orders made upon
him which he runs away from, and once was taken
in the passage of this very house with an
umbrella up and the Major's hat on, giving his
name with the door-mat round him as Sir Johnson
Jones K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the
Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into
the house not a minute before, through the girl
letting him on to the mat when he sent in a piece
of paper twisted more like one of those spills
for lighting candles than a note, offering me the
choice between thirty shillings in hand and his
brains on the premises marked immediate and
waiting for an answer. My dear it gave me such
a dreadful turn to think of the brains of my
poor dear Lirriper's own flesh and blood flying
about the new oilcloth however unworthy to be
so assisted, that I went out of my room here to
ask him what he would take once for all not to
do it for life when I found him in the custody
of two gentlemen that I should have judged to
be in the feather-bed trade if they had not
announced the law, so fluffy were their personal
appearance. "Bring your chains sir," says
Joshua to the littlest of the two in the biggest
hat, "rivet on my fetters!" Imagine my feelings
when I pictered him clanking up Norfolk-street
in irons and Miss Wozenham looking out
of window! "Gentlemen" I says all of a
tremble and ready to drop "please to bring him
into Major Jackman's apartments." So they
brought him into the Parlours, and when the
Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on him
which Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in
the passage for a military disguise he goes into
such a tearing passion that he tips it off his head
with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling
with his foot where it grazed long afterwards.
"Major" I says "be cool and advise me what to
do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper's own
youngest brother." "Madam" says the Major
"my advice is that you board and lodge him in a
Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to the
proprietor when exploded." "Major" I says "as
a Christian you cannot mean your words."
"Madam" says the Major "by the Lord I do!" and
indeed the Major besides being with all his
merits a very passionate man for his size had
a bad opinion of Joshua on account of former
troubles even unattended by liberties taken with
his apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this
conversation betwixt us he turns upon the
littlest one with the biggest hat and says "Come
sir! Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is
my mouldy straw!" My dear at the picter of
him rising in my mind dressed almost entirely
in padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book
I was so overcome that I burst into tears and I
says to the Major, "Major take my keys and
settle with these gentlemen or I shall never
know a happy minute more," which was done
several times both before and since, but still I
must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his
good feelings and shows them in being always
so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear
mourning for his brother. Many a long year
have I left off my widow's mourning not being
wishful to intrude, but the tender point in
Joshua that I cannot help a little yielding to is
when he writes "One single sovereign would
enable me to wear a decent suit of mourning for
my much-loved brother. I vowed at the time of
his lamented death that I would ever wear
sables in memory of him but Alas how short-
sighted is man, How keep that vow when
penniless!" It says a good deal for the strength
of his feelings that he couldn't have been seven