of housebreaker.  Taught that he really was a poor creature for the work, Dandy, his nursing over, begged to be allowed to stop and wait on Mrs. Mel; and she who had, like many strong natures, a share of pity for the objects she despised, did not cast him out.  A jerk in his gait, owing to the bit of lead Mrs. Mel had dropped into him, and a little, perhaps, to her self-satisfied essay in surgical science on his person, earned him the name he went by.

When her neighbours remonstrated with her for housing a reprobate, Mrs. Mel would say:  ’Dandy is well-fed and well-physicked:  there’s no harm in Dandy’; by which she may have meant that the food won his gratitude, and the physic reduced his humours.  She had observed human nature.  At any rate, Dandy was her creature; and the great Mel himself rallied her about her squire.

’When were you drunk last?, was Mrs. Mel’s address to Dandy, as he stood waiting for orders.

He replied to it in an altogether injured way: 

’There, now; you’ve been and called me away from my dinner to ask me that.  Why, when I had the last chance, to be sure.’

‘And you were at dinner in your new black suit?’

‘Well,’ growled Dandy, ’I borrowed Sally’s apron.  Seems I can’t please ye.’

Mrs. Mel neither enjoined nor cared for outward forms of respect, where she was sure of complete subserviency.  If Dandy went beyond the limits, she gave him an extra dose.  Up to the limits he might talk as he pleased, in accordance with Mrs. Mel’s maxim, that it was a necessary relief to all talking creatures.

‘Now, take off your apron,’ she said, ’and wash your hands, dirty pig, and go and wait at table in there’; she pointed to the parlour-door:  ‘Come straight to me when everybody has left.’

‘Well, there I am with the bottles again,’ returned Dandy.  ’It ’s your fault this time, mind!  I’ll come as straight as I can.’

Dandy turned away to perform her bidding, and Mrs. Mel ascended to the drawing-room to sit with Mrs. Wishaw, who was, as she told all who chose to hear, an old flame of Mel’s, and was besides, what Mrs. Mel thought more of, the wife of Mel’s principal creditor, a wholesale dealer in cloth, resident in London.

The conviviality of the mourners did not disturb the house.  Still, men who are not accustomed to see the colour of wine every day, will sit and enjoy it, even upon solemn occasions, and the longer they sit the more they forget the matter that has brought them together.  Pleading their wives and shops, however, they released Evan from his miserable office late in the afternoon.

His mother came down to him,—­and saying, ’I see how you did the journey —­you walked it,’ told him to follow her.

‘Yes, mother,’ Evan yawned, ’I walked part of the way.  I met a fellow in a gig about ten miles out of Fallow field, and he gave me a lift to Flatsham.  I just reached Lymport in time, thank Heaven!  I wouldn’t have missed that!  By the way, I’ve satisfied these men.’