then! Such a rocomawolia as it was! But he
gave it up, and the whole kit might go to
rookum-rakum—hand or foot; he'd never stir!"
Laying the table, he would comment on the
length of dress of the young ladies present.
"Sweeping the gutter up! O Modyee!
Modyee!" (a corruption of the French mon
Dieu!). " After that! Really, now, I was
ashamed of ye to see ye born ladies coming
along gathering up all the mud in the gutter!"

He strongly objected to what he considered
extra professional duties—too much opening of
the door; after which he said "his heart was
broke, up and down, up and down"—or to
being sent out on messages—or, above all, to
entertainments. His constitutional antipathy
to a dinner-party was so marked, that it was
not without trepidation that the news of such
a festival being in contemplation could be
broken to him. It was usually received without
any reply, and with a slow descending the
stairs, and perhaps a muttered "Well! after
that, now!" He went through the performance
with restraint, however, for he knew what
was owing to himself. But the next day a
sound of metallic chinking, maintained all the
morning, showed what was in progress. He
would then repair up-stairs, and with a mysterious
manner pointedly invite Miss Simpson
downstairs. He meant to convey that she
was his chief enemy, but he wished to have even
her testimony.

"What is the matter, John?"

"Just come down, miss. It's high time it's
all to end—high time!"

Below, on the sideboard, were ranged all the
plates, knives, spoons, symmetrically sparkling.
He wished everything to be counted, the inventory
to be taken as strongly as could be against
him. There were the two glasses he broke last
year, and he knew who spoke about that, but no
matter now—it was all at an end now; and
after his forty-five years' service, it was a poor
thing to be going out on the world, &c. This
scene came gradually to be in the usual course,
and was expected as regularly as the rising of
the sun on the day after each banquet. Mutual
concessions and explanations were made, and
after a little weeping—for he had the gift of
tears—things were happily composed.

Sometimes the Pariah and he had a falling
out, and that was a far more serious business.
Once he acted the unworthy part of a spy or
informer, and words could not pourtray the
scorn and loathing with which I looked at him.
He seemed to me all over a palpable leprosy—
of a moral sort. I considered him outside the
pale of society, as one whom all good men
might hunt down or kill. One evening I
plotted this exquisite vengeance. To the realms
below, where were kitchen, pantry, &c., a dark
stair led down. The plan was this. I got a large
step-ladder, a parlour chair or two, and the plate-
warmer, and laid them down sideways at the
top of the dark stair as a sort of barricade.
The light was beyond the title of dim or religious—
it was sheer darkness. I then rang the
bell, and waited in ambush. I heard his
step; and then came an awful crash—a human
form tumbling, the wooden clatter of the
chairs and ladder, the jingling of the plate-warmer,
and a human voice uttering maledictions
mingled with pain. The recognised police
were out shopping, but I heard scrambling, as
of feet taking two steps at a time, and fled.
I had barely time to save myself in the
garret, to bolt and barricade the door, when
he arrived. Such agility in one of his years
was surprising. His threatenings, half intelligible
as heard through wood, but acquiring
a Pythonic grandeur from their very indistinctness,
scared my very soul. He went away at
last, but did never betray me.

Indeed, he was to be admired, and unconsciously
implanted in me early convictions of
the value of a steady rule of life, and the sense
of duty and of the unconscious weight and
value in this world of the respectable qualities
and steady virtues. I would see him making
his way with a facility that seemed to me little
short of magical. His surprising powers of
access and of easy approach to others was, no
doubt, owing to his travels and to his having
seen the world. I never shall forget my
astonishment on the occasion of some royal visit,
when the gaping crowd were gazing with
an almost fetish admiration at the scarlet
postilions' liveries and the mirror-like panels,
when he was seen alone, within the charmed
circle, in easy conversation with one of the
august postilions. Prom that personage he
obtained the most curious information as to
there being "forty-five of the beautifullest
horses daily maintained in those august stables,
and that the head-coachman was in receipt of a
thousand a year." Police sergeants and
inspectors were invariably courteous to him, and
yielded him privileges which they did to no one
else. At a ball or rout at some great house he
was invariably taken in from the inclemency
outside, and entertained in the private snuggery
of the steward. If a great ship arrived in
harbour, he had been all over her, and had even had
a pleasant interview with the captain, who in the
most affable way had offered him something
out of his locker. This mysterious charm was
the secret of his power.

III. MR. BLACKSTONE.

I LOOK out of the study window, and now
see Mr. Blackstone, the new tutor, hurrying up
the street, his neat frock-coat flying out to the
breeze, his two fingers poising the neatest of
known umbrellas. A small spare man, smaller
chested, with orange-coloured hair, and
whiskers that seemed made of cocoa-nut fibre. The
neatest, most precise of men, not yet a clergy,
man, but to be one; full of a strong sense of
duty and office and responsibility, and who we
knew had supported two elderly and useless
sisters by his own overworked brain. So had
he laboured on through his college, laboured to
his degree, and was labouring to a curacy,
always respectable, neat, and scrupulous in his