me!  As I says to the parties at the ‘Imperial’ at Folkstone, ladies thinks an elderly person can’t get through their work, but they can do a deal more than the young ones that has to be told every—­Using the table-cloth to wipe the dishes am I?  Tst, tst! so I ham!  M’m!  Hemma! where’s your kitchen cloths?  I don’t know where things his yet, Mrs. Hewin.  But I’ve ’ad a ’Ome of my own, Mrs. Hewin, and been use to take care of things”—­("Take care, Mrs. Plumridge")—­“Well now! ’owever did that slip through my fingers now?  Tst! tst! tst!  There must have been a bit of butter on the hunder side I think.  Eh! deary dear!  Ah—!  Oh—!” Pause—­Solo recitative—­“Eh, dear!  If my poor ’usband was but alive, I shouldn’t be wanting now!  I Ope I give you satisfaction, Mrs. Hewin.  If I’m poor, I’m honest.  I ope I give satisfaction in hevery way, Mrs. Hewin, Your property is safe in my ’ands, Mrs. Hewin!  What do you think of my papers, Mrs. Hewin?  One lady as see them said she didn’t know what more hany one could require.” (Said papers chiefly consisting of baptism registers of the little Plumridges.  Marriage lines of Mrs. P., and forms in reference to the late Mr. P., a pensioner.)

SEQUEL.

“Emma, where’s the water-can?”

“Please ’m, Mrs. Plumberridge, she left it outside of the door yesterday, and some one’s took it.”

There is yet a later widow, but I do not think of taking her into the house.  The Widow Bone has taken to boning her daughter’s clothes, so she is forbidden the house....

To A.E.

Brighton.  April 17, 1872.

...  I got here all right, and wonderfully little tired, though the train shook a good deal the latter part of the way.

Oh! the FLOWERS!  The cowslips, the purple orchids, the kingcups, the primroses!  And the grey, drifting cumuli with gaps of blue, and the cinnamon and purple woods, broken with yellowish poplars and pale willows, with red farms, and yellow gorse lighted up by the sun!!!  The oaks just beginning to break out in yellowish tufts, [Sketch.] I can’t tell you what lovely sketches I passed between Aldershot and Redhill!

On to Brighton I took charge of a small boy being sent by a fond mother to school.  When I mention that he was nine years old,—­and informed me—­that he had got “a jolly book,” which proved to be A School for Fathers, that his own school wasn’t much of a one, and he was going to leave, and ate hard-boiled eggs and crystallized oranges by the way—­you will see how this generation waxes apace!!

Ecclesfield.  May 27, 1872.

...  The weather is very nice now.  I stayed till the end of the Litany in church yesterday, and then slipped out by the organ door and sat with Mother.  I sat on the Boy’s school side of the chancel, where a little lad near me was singing alto (not a “second” of thirds!) strong and steady as a thrush in a hedge!!  The music went very well.