d
of boys to rob our own orchard--a bold deed, for which Bishop Anna
ofttimes launched at me and! all her suffragans her severest censure--it
was her slipper, I remember. But I can't run barefoot all day long on the
wet sand now, with the salt spray blowing in my face, and a young lady of
one-and-twenty seldom or never rushes out to play dumps and baggy-mug in
public with little girls of ten.

"As a result, my former adventures are now limited to careering on the
back of little 'Caesar,' who has grown so ancient and fat that he waddles
like an old duck, and riding him is like working your passage. So I
confine myself to sitting on committees, and being sometimes sat upon,
and rubbing the runes for grandfather, and cleaning the milkpails for
Aunt Anna, and even such holy kill-times as going to church regularly and
watching Neilus when he is passing round the plate after 'Let your light
so shine before men'--light to his practical intellect being clearly a
synonym for silver in the shape of threepenny bits!

"But, oh my! oh my! I am a dark character in this place for all that The
dear old goodies have never yet said a syllable about my letter
announcing that I had gone over to the enemy (i. e., Satan and the music
hall), and there is a dead hush in the house as often as the wind of
conversation veers in that direction. This is nothing, though, to the
white awe in the air when visitors call and I am questioned how I earn my
living in London. I hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the long-drawn
breath of relief when I wriggle out of a tight place without telling a
lie. But you can't hide an eel in a sack, and I know the truth will pop
out one of these days. Only yesterday I went district-visiting with Aunt
Rachel, and one of the Balaams of life, who keeps a tavern for fishermen,
lured us into his bar parlour to look at a portrait of 'Gloria' which he
had cut out of an illustrated paper and pinned up on the wall 'because it
resembled me so much!' Oh, dear! oh, dear! I could have found it in my
heart to brazen it out on the spot at this sight of my evil fame; but
when I saw poor little auntie watching me with fearful eyes I talked away
like a mill-wheel and went out thanking God that the rest of the people
of Peel were not as other men are, or even as this publican.

"I have been getting newspapers myself, though, sent by my friend Rosa;
and as long as the mis-reporters concerned themselves with my own doings
and failure