with a mighty chuckle, and cried, with the voice of a Stentor, "Dang it, I have it!"

66

Harkye, man!" continued he, addressing Peter, who had sat pensively on one side of his friend, whilst Smoker reposed on the other"Harkye, man! you shall quarrel with me, and you shall make your will. Send Lawyer Davis to me to-night; for we must see that it shall be only a will, and not a conveyance or a deed of gift; and you shall also take to your bed. Send Thomson, the apothecary, along with Davis: they're good fellows both, and will rejoice in humbugging Miss Judith. And then you shall insist on Jacob's marrying Judith, and shall give her five hundred pounds down, -that's a fair fortune, as times go; I don't want to cheat the woman; besides, it's worth anything to be quit of her; and then they shall marry. Marriages are made in heaven, as my mistress says; and if that couple don't torment each other's heart out, my name's not Stephen. And when they are fairly gone off on their bridal excursion,- to Windsor, maybe; ay, Mistress Judith used to want to see the Castle,

24 PETER JENKINS, THE POULTERER.

off with them to Windsor from the church

door; and then for another will, and another wedding-hey, Peter!-and a handsome marriage-settlement upon little Sally. We'll get her and her grandmother to my house to-morrow, and my wife will see to the finery. Off with you, man! Don't stand there, between laughing and crying; but get home, and set about it. And mind you don't forget to send Thomson and Lawyer Davis to me this very evening."

And home went Stephen, chuckling; and, as he said, it was done,-ay, within a fortnight from that very day; and the two couples were severally as happy and as unhappy as their several qualities could make them -- Mr. and Mrs. Jones finding so much employment in plaguing each other, that the good poulterer and his pretty wife, and Stephen, and the hamlet of Sunham, were rid of them altogether.

25

THE SAILOR'S WEDDING.

BESIDES Mrs. Martin, her maid Patty, and her cat, there was one inmate of the little toyshop in the market-place, who immediately attracted Mr. Singleton's attention, and not only won, but secured, the warm and constant affection of the kind-hearted bachelor. It was a chubby, noisy, sturdy, rude, riotous elf, of some three years old, still petticoated, but so self-willed, and bold, and masterful, so strong and so conscious of his strength, so obstinate and resolute, and, above all, so utterly contemptuous of female objurgation, and rebellious to female rule, (an evil propensity that seems born with the unfair sex,) that it was by no means necessary to hear his Christian name of Tom, to feel assured that the urchin in question belonged to the masculine half of the species. Nevertheless, daring, wilful, and

VOL. II.

с

unruly as it was, the brat was loveable, being, to say the truth, one of the merriest, drollest, best natured, most generous, and most affectionate creatures that ever bounded about this work-a-day world; and Mr. Singleton, who, in common with many placid quiet persons, liked nothing so well as the reckless lightheartedness which supplied the needful impetus to his own tranquil spirit, took to the boy the very first evening, and became, from that hour, his most indulgent patron and protector, his champion in every scrape, and refuge in every calamity.

There was no love lost between them. Tom, who would have resisted Mrs. Martin or Patty to the death; who, the more they called him the more he would not come, and the more they bade him not do a thing, the more he did it; who, when cautioned against wetting his feet, jumped up to his neck in the water

* I remember an imp, the son of a dear friend of mine, of some four or five years old, of very delicate frame, but of a most sturdy and masterful spirit, who one day standing on the lawn without a hat, in the midst of a hard rain, said to his mother, who, after nurses and nursery-maids had striven in vain with the screaming, kicking, struggling urchin, tried her gentler influence to prevail on him to

tub, and when desired to keep himself clean, solaced himself and the tabby cat with a game at romps in the coal-hole; who, in short, whilst under female dominion, played every prank of which an unruly boy is capable—was amenable to the slightest word or look from Mr. Singleton, came at his call, went away at his desire; desisted at his command from riding the unfortunate wooden steed, who, to say nothing of two or three dangerous falls, equally perilous to the horse and his rider, ran great risk of being worn out by Master Tom's passion for equestrian exercise; and even under his orders abandoned his favourite exercise of parading before the door beating a toy-drum, or blowing a penny-trumpet, and producing from those

come in doors for fear of catching cold-" I won't go in! I will stand here! I choose to catch cold! I like to be ill! and if you plague me much longer, I'll die!" This hopeful young gentleman has outlived the perils of his childhood, (I suppose his self-will was drubbed out of him by stronger and equally determined comrades at a public school,) and he is now an aspirant of some eminence in the literary and political world. I have not seen him these twenty years but if this note should meet his eye, and he should happen to recognise his own portrait, he would be amused by my tender recollection of his early days.