other, the boy should spend the
vacations at a Yorkshire school;--twice every year--in the Dog-days and
December--is the house turned topsy-turvy,--it may be sport to you,
Master Tom, but 'tis death to us.

[Illustration]

Thus older grew the year, and fuller got the Diary--Mr. Brown
graphically recounting the doings and disasters of "December 28_th_,
_Friday_.--Unpropitious, fatal, Friday! I never knew it lucky save once,
and then it _was_--I let the Albert. 'Christmas comes but once a year,'
with a train of nasty bills, not to be bilk'd; and sorry consolation is
it thinking you 'paid at the time,' when the receipt is not to be found.
Miss-Fortune, that never came single, now visits with a large family of
little pests--out of season and uninvited!--Here is Needy, the pianist,
who, one would think, had married her; for he has children enough to
fill a charity school. Needy, of No. 9, Brown Terrace, has absconded
without paying the rent--sending the key, and L12. 10_s._, instead of
L14., with a shabby excuse about hoping to be able to make up the
difference some day:--this is the return for showing compassion to a
poor devil!--I ought to have known, when I took the cottage-piano for
last quarter, though Spohf did say it was a six-and-three-quarters,
worth three times the money!--I am a good-natured fool, and ought,
in justice to my family, to be a little more selfish--these mean
professionals estimating their rubbish far beyond all reason!--My
spirits are damped--and so are we all, for the water-pipes that that
rascal Plummer fixed, at the low contract, have burst with this
evening's thaw, and were discovered just as the water was coming in;
having played, I know not how long, a fountain in the bathroom, tumbling
down the stairs like the falls of the Niagara, obliging us to insert
tobacco-pipes all over the drawing-room ceiling, to drain the
inundation:--it has spoilt the watered paper, stained the aquatint of
the Aqueduct, and 'Wellington at Waterloo,' done for the water-gilding,
and saturated the 'Momentous Question;' the 'Heart's Misgivings' is a
sop; and the water-colour of the 'Flood' is washed away. Alphonso is
sitting up in goloshes to empty the pots, and I doubt much if I shall
sleep over the dropping-well."

[Illustration]

How Mr. Brown slept we do not know, but can imagine, for here is the
Diurnal Record, made up in bed:--"December 29_th_, _Saturday_.--Dreamed
Victoria Villa turned into a hydropathic