and doing it oftener in the mud and mizzle than not and at a rate of
wages more resembling Little Britain than Great. But at last one morning
when she was too poorly to come running down-stairs he says to me with a
pleased look in his face that made me next to love the man in his uniform
coat though he was dripping wet "I have taken you first in the street
this morning Mrs. Lirriper, for here's the one for Mrs. Edson." I went
up to her bedroom with it as fast as ever I could go, and she sat up in
bed when she saw it and kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare
came upon her. "It's very short!" she says lifting her large eyes to my
face. "O Mrs. Lirriper it's very short!" I says "My dear Mrs. Edson no
doubt that's because your husband hadn't time to write more just at that
time." "No doubt, no doubt," says she, and puts her two hands on her
face and turns round in her bed.

I shut her softly in and I crept down-stairs and I tapped at the Major's
door, and when the Major having his thin slices of bacon in his own Dutch
oven saw me he came out of his chair and put me down on the sofa. "Hush!"
says he, "I see something's the matter. Don't speak--take time." I says
"O Major I'm afraid there's cruel work up-stairs." "Yes yes" says he "I
had begun to be afraid of it--take time." And then in opposition to his
own words he rages out frightfully, and says "I shall never forgive
myself Madam, that I, Jemmy Jackman, didn't see it all that
morning--didn't go straight up-stairs when my boot-sponge was in my
hand--didn't force it down his throat--and choke him dead with it on the
spot!"

The Major and me agreed when we came to ourselves that just at present we
could do no more than take on to suspect nothing and use our best
endeavours to keep that poor young creature quiet, and what I ever should
have done without the Major when it got about among the organ-men that
quiet was our object is unknown, for he made lion and tiger war upon them
to that degree that without seeing it I could not have believed it was in
any gentleman to have such a power of bursting out with fire-irons
walking-sticks water-jugs coals potatoes off his table the very hat off
his head, and at the same time so furious in foreign languages that they
would stand with their handles half-turned fixed like the Sleeping
Ugly--for I cannot say Beauty.

Ever to see the postman come near the house now gave me such I fear that
it was a reprieve when