eplied, contemptuously; "ten
times wuss than that, and madder for the Admiral. Give me that paper,
Miss, and then, perhaps, I'll tell 'e. Be no good to you, and might be
useful to me."

Mary could not give up the paper, because it was a letter from one of
her adorers, which, with the aid of Jenny Shanks, she had interpreted.
"No, no," she said, with a coaxing look; "by-and-by, Mr. Swipes, when
you have told me who it is, and when you have promised not to tell on
poor Miss Dolly. But nobody sha'n't see it, without your permission.
We'll have another talk about that to-morrow. But, oh my! look at the
time you have kept me, with all the good things to make a hangel's
mouth water! Bring me two cauliflowers in two seconds. My beef will want
basting long ago; and if Dandy hathn't left his job, he'll be pretty
well roasted hisself by now."

Mr. Swipes went muttering up the walk, and was forced to cut two of the
finest cauliflowers intended for Cheeseman's adornment to-morrow. This
turned his heart very sour again, and he shook his head, growling in
self-commune: "You see if I don't do it, my young lady. You speaks again
me, behind my back, and I writes again you, before your face; though, in
course, I need not put my name to it."

CHAPTER XXXV

LOYAL, AYE LOYAL

One of the dinners at the Darling Arms, and perhaps the most brilliant
and exciting of the whole, because even the waiters understood the
subject, was the entertainment given in the month of December, A.D.
1803, not only by the officers of two regiments quartered for the time
near Stonnington, but also by all the leading people round about those
parts, in celebration of the great work done by His Majesty's 38-gun
frigate Leda. Several smaller dinners had been consumed already, by way
of practice, both for the cooks and the waiters and the chairman, and
Mr. John Prater, who always stood behind him, with a napkin in one hand
and a corkscrew in the other, and his heart in the middle, ready either
to assuage or stimulate. As for the guests, it was always found that no
practice had been required.

"But now, but now"--as Mr. Prater said, when his wife pretended to make
nothing of it, for no other purpose than to aggravate him, because she
thought that he was making too much money, in proportion to what he was
giving her--"now we shall see what Springhaven can do for the good of
the Country and the glory of herself. Two bottles and a half a head is
the lowest th