ing of green-groceries and sawpits, how he
afterwards became involved, and how much the preacher had been guilty in
deceiving him, I never clearly understood. However, my nurse never, for
a long time after, spoke of the reverend gentleman without applying the
corner of her apron to her eyes, or her husband without a hearty
malediction. We removed to our old neighbourhood, but, instead of
taking a respectable house, we were forced to burrow in mean lodgings.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

ANOTHER MIGRATION--FROM THE RURALITIES OF CUT-THROAT LANE TO THE GROVES
OF ACADEMUS--I AM FORCED INTO GOOD CLOTHES AND THE PATHS OF LEARNING IN
SPITE OF MY TEETH, THOUGH I USE THEM SPITEFULLY.

Misfortunes never come single. I don't know why they should. They are
but scarecrow, lean-visaged, miserable associates, and so they arrive in
a body to keep each other in countenance. I had been but a few weeks in
our present miserable abode, and had fully recovered my health, though I
think that I was a little crazed with the prints, and the subjects of
them, over which I daily pored in the large Bible, when the greatest
misfortune of all came upon the poor Brandons--and that was, to add to
their other losses, the loss of my invaluable self.

The misery was unexpected--it was sudden--it was overwhelming. Brandon
was toeing a chalked line on a heavy log of mahogany, unconscious of the
mischief that was working at home. He afterwards told me, and I believe
him, that he would have opposed the proceeding by force, if force had
been requisite. A plain private or hired carriage drove up to the door,
and, after ascertaining that the Brandons lived at the house, a
business-like looking, elderly gentleman stepped out, paid every demand
immediately, and ordered my best clothes on. When I was thus equipped,
my nurse was told that she was perfectly welcome to the remainder of my
effects, and that I must get into the carriage.

The good woman was thunderstruck. There was a scene. She raved, and I
cried, and the four little Brandons, at least three of them, joined in
the chorus of lamentation, because the naughty man was going to take
brother Ralph away. I had been too well taught by old Ford, not to
visit my indignation upon the shins and hands of the carrier away of
captives, in well-applied kicks, and almost rabid bites. There was a
great disturbance. The neighbours thought it very odd that the mother
should allow her eldest son to be, carried off