ing your
name under the serious consideration of my Lord the
Postmaster-General.

I am, sir,
Your obedient servant,

(Signed) BOREAS BODKIN.

In the same envelope was a short note from one of his brother clerks.

DEAR CROCKER,

You had better be here sharp at ten to-morrow. Mr.
Jerningham bids me tell you.

Yours truly,

BART. BOBBIN.

Thus Crocker got through his troubles on this occasion.

CHAPTER IX.

MISS DEMIJOHN'S INGENUITY.

On the day on which Crocker was going through his purgatory at the
Post Office, a letter reached Lady Kingsbury at Trafford Park, which
added much to the troubles and annoyances felt by different members
of the family there. It was an anonymous letter, and the reader,--who
in regard to such mysteries should never be kept a moment in
ignorance,--may as well be told at once that the letter was written
by that enterprising young lady, Miss Demijohn. The letter was
written on New Year's Day, after the party,--perhaps in consequence
of the party, as the rash doings of some of the younger members of
the Trafford family were made specially obvious to Miss Demijohn by
what was said on that occasion. The letter ran as follows:

MY LADY MARCHIONESS--

I conceive it to be my duty as a well-wisher of the family
to inform you that your stepson, Lord Hampstead, has
become entangled in what I think to be a dangerous way
with a young woman living in a neighbouring street to
this.

The "neighbouring" street was of course a stroke of cunning on the
part of Miss Demijohn.

She lives at No. 17, Paradise Row, Holloway, and her name
is Marion Fay. She is daughter to an old Quaker, who is
clerk to Pogson and Littlebird, King's Court, Great Broad
Street, and isn't of course in any position to entertain
such hopes as these. He may have a little money saved, but
what's that to the likes of your ladyship and his lordship
the Marquis? Some think she is pretty. I don't. Now I
don't like such cunning ways. Of what I tell your ladyship
there isn't any manner of doubt. His lordship was there
for hours the other day, and the girl is going about as
proud as a peacock.

It's what I call a regular Paradise Row conspiracy, and
though the Quaker has lent himself to it, he ain't at
the bottom. Next door but two to the Fays there is a Mrs.
Roden living, who has got a son, a stuck-up fellow and