listened to the words of
his wife. Mrs. Bozzle was quite prepared to admit that Madame T.,--as
Mrs. Trevelyan had come to be called at No. 55, Stony Walk,--was
no better than she should be. Mrs. Bozzle was disposed to think
that ladies of quality, among whom Madame T. was entitled in her
estimation to take rank, were seldom better than they ought to be,
and she was quite willing that her husband should earn his bread
by watching the lady or the lady's lover. She had participated in
Bozzle's triumph when he had discovered that the Colonel had gone to
Devonshire, and again when he had learned that the Lothario had been
at St. Diddulph's. And had the case been brought before the judge
ordinary by means of her husband's exertions, she would have taken
pleasure in reading every word of the evidence, even though her
husband should have been ever so roughly handled by the lawyers. But
now, when a demand was made upon Bozzle to violate the sanctity of
the clergyman's house, and withdraw the child by force or stratagem,
she began to perceive that the palmy days of the Trevelyan affair
were over for them, and that it would be wise on her husband's part
gradually to back out of the gentleman's employment. "Just put it on
the fire-back, Bozzle," she said one morning, as her husband stood
before her reading for the second time a somewhat lengthy epistle
which had reached him from Italy, while he held the baby over his
shoulder with his left arm. He had just washed himself at the sink,
and though his face was clean, his hair was rough, and his shirt
sleeves were tucked up.

[Illustration: "Put it on the fire-back, Bozzle."]

"That's all very well, Maryanne; but when a party has took a gent's
money, a party is bound to go through with the job."

"Gammon, Bozzle."

"It's all very well to say gammon; but his money has been took,--and
there's more to come."

"And ain't you worked for the money,--down to Hexeter one time,
across the water pretty well day and night watching that ere
clergyman's 'ouse like a cat? What more'd he have? As to the child,
I won't hear of it, B. The child shan't come here. We'd all be
shewed up in the papers as that black, that they'd hoot us along the
streets. It ain't the regular line of business, Bozzle; and there
ain't no good to be got, never, by going off the regular line."
Whereupon Bozzle scratched his head and again read the letter. A
distinct promise of a hundred pounds was made to him, i