Go to church whenever you can without
losing a farthing. It's medicinal; soothes the
brain, and takes it off worldly cares. And have
no words with your husband: or he'll outlive you;
it's his only chance of getting the last word.
Care killed a cat, a nanimal with eight lives more
than a chatterbox. If you worry or excite your
brain, little Maxley, you will cook your own
goose—by a quick fire."

"Dear hear!, these be unked sayings. Won't
ye give me nothing to make me better, sir?"

"No; I never tinker; I go to the root: you
may buy a vile of chlorofm, and take a puff if ye
feel premonory symps: but a quite brain is your
only real chance. Now slope! and send the
male screw."

"Anan?"

"Your husband."

"That I will, sir. Your sarvant, doctor; your
sarvant, ma'am; sarvant all the company."

Mrs. Dodd hoped the poor woman had nothing
very serious the matter.

"Oh, it is a mortal disease," replied Sampson,
as cool as a cucumber. "She has got angina
pictoris, or brist-pang, a disorder that admirably
eximplifies the pretinsions of midicine t'a
sceince." And with this he dashed into a long
monologue.

Maxley's tall gaunt form came slouching in,
and traversed the floor, pounding it with heavy
nailed boots. He seated himself gravely at Mrs.
Dodd's invitation, took a handkerchief out of his
hat, wiped his face, and surveyed the company,
grand and calm. In James Maxley all was
ponderous; his head was huge; his mouth, when it
fairly opened, revealed a chasm, and thence issued
a voice naturally stentorian by its volume and
native vigour. But when the owner of this
incarnate bassoon had a mind to say something
sagacious, he sank at once from his habitual roar
to a sound scarce above a whisper; a contrast
mighty comical to hear, though on paper nil.

"Well, what is it, Maxley? Rheumatism
again?"

"No, that it ain't," bellowed Maxley, defiantly.

"What then? Come, look sharp."

"Well, then, doctor, I'll tell you. I'm sore
troubled—with—a—mouse."

This malady, announced in the tone of a
proclamation, and coming after so much solemn
preparation, amused the party considerably,
although parturient mountains had ere then
produced muscipular abortions.

"A mouse!" inquired Sampson, disdainfully.
"Where? up your sleeve? Don't come to me:
go t'a sawbones and have your arm cut off. I've
seen 'em mutilate a pashint for as little."

Maxley said it was not up his sleeve, worse
luck.

On this, Alfred hazarded a conjecture. Might
it not have gone down his throat? "Took his
potato-trap for the pantry-door. Ha! ha!"

"Ay, I hear ye, young man, a laughing at your
own sport," said Maxley, winking his eye; "but
'tain't the biggest mouth as catches the most:
you sits yander fit to bust: but (with a roar like
a lion) ye never offers me none on't, neither sup
nor bit."

At his sudden turn of Mr. Maxley's wit, light
and playful as a tap of the old English quarter-
staff, they were a little staggered, all but Edward,
who laughed and supplied him zealously with
sandwiches.

"You're a gentleman, you are," said Maxley,
looking full at Sampson and Alfred to point the
contradistinction.

Having thus disposed of his satirists, he
contemplated the sandwiches with an inquiring and
philosophic eye. "Well," said he, after long
and thoughtful inspection, "you gentlefolks
won't die of hard work; your sarvants must cut
the very meat to fit your mouths." And not to
fall behind the gentry in a great and useful
department of intelligence, he made precisely
one mouthful of each sandwich.

Mrs. Dodd was secretly amazed, and taking
care not to be noticed by Maxley, said
confidentially, "Monsieur avait bien raison; le souris
a passé par là."

The plate cleared, and washed down with a
tumbler of port, Maxley resumed, and informed
the doctor that the mouse was at this moment in
his garden eating his bulbs. "And I be come
here to put an end to her, if I've any luck at all."

Sampson told him he needn't trouble. "Nature
has put an end to her as long as her body."

Mr. Maxley was puzzled for a moment, then
opened his mouth from ear to ear, in a guffaw
that made the glasses ring. His humour was
perverse: he was wit-proof and fun-proof; but
at a feeble jest would sometimes roar like a lion
inflated with laughing gas. Laughed he ever so
loud and long, he always ended abruptly and
without gradation; his laugh was a clean spadeful
dug out of Merriment. He resumed his
gravity and his theme all in an instant, "White
arsenic she won't look at, for I've tried her; but
they tell me there's another sweetmeat come up:
which they call it strick-nine."

"Hets! let the poor beasty alone. Life's as
sweet tit as tus."

"If you was a gardener, you'd feel for the
bulbs, not for the varmin," remonstrated Maxley,
rather arrogantly.

"But bein a man of sceince, I feel for th'
higher organisation. Mice are a part of Nature;
as much as market gardeners."

"So be stoats; and adders; and doctors."

Sampson appealed; "Jintlemen, here's a pretty
pashint: reflects on our lairned profission, and it
never cost him a guinea; for the dog never
pays."

"Don't let my chaff choke ye, doctor! That
warn't meant for you altogether. So if ye have
got a little bit of that ere about you——"

"I'm not a ratcatcher, my man: I don't go
with dith in my pocket, like the surgeons that
carry a lancet. And if I had Murder in both
pockets, you shouldn't get any. Here's a greedy
dog! got a thousand pounds in the bank; and