n the absence of chairs, we used to sit and make love.'

'Make love upon a kitchen-dresser!' interrupted Mr. Watkins Tottle, whose
ideas of decorum were greatly outraged.

'Ah! On a kitchen-dresser!' replied Parsons. 'And let me tell you, old
fellow, that, if you were really over head-and-ears in love, and had no
other place to make love in, you'd be devilish glad to avail yourself of
such an opportunity. However, let me see;--where was I?'

'On the dresser,' suggested Timson.

'Oh--ah! Well, here I found poor Fanny, quite disconsolate and
uncomfortable. The old boy had been very cross all day, which made her
feel still more lonely; and she was quite out of spirits. So, I put a
good face on the matter, and laughed it off, and said we should enjoy the
pleasures of a matrimonial life more by contrast; and, at length, poor
Fanny brightened up a little. I stopped there, till about eleven
o'clock, and, just as I was taking my leave for the fourteenth time, the
girl came running down the stairs, without her shoes, in a great fright,
to tell us that the old villain--Heaven forgive me for calling him so,
for he is dead and gone now!--prompted I suppose by the prince of
darkness, was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper--a thing he
had not done before, for six months, to my certain knowledge; for the
cask stood in that very back kitchen. If he discovered me there,
explanation would have been out of the question; for he was so
outrageously violent, when at all excited, that he never would have
listened to me. There was only one thing to be done. The chimney was a
very wide one; it had been originally built for an oven; went up
perpendicularly for a few feet, and then shot backward and formed a sort
of small cavern. My hopes and fortune--the means of our joint existence
almost--were at stake. I scrambled in like a squirrel; coiled myself up
in this recess; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal
chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which my unconscious
father-in-law carried in his hand. I heard him draw the beer; and I
never heard beer run so slowly. He was just leaving the kitchen, and I
was preparing to descend, when down came the infernal chimney-board with
a tremendous crash. He stopped and put down the candle and the jug of
beer on the dresser; he was a nervous old fellow, and any unexpected
noise annoyed him. He coolly observed that the fire-place was never
used, and sending the