Brother that made away with her was quite right, for a tidier young woman
for a wife never came into a house and afterwards called with the
beautifullest Plymouth Twins--it was the day before Midsummer Day when
Winifred Madgers comes and says to me "A gentleman from the Consul's
wishes particular to speak to Mrs. Lirriper." If you'll believe me my
dear the Consols at the bank where I have a little matter for Jemmy got
into my head, and I says "Good gracious I hope he ain't had any dreadful
fall!" Says Winifred "He don't look as if he had ma'am." And I says
"Show him in."

The gentleman came in dark and with his hair cropped what I should
consider too close, and he says very polite "Madame Lirrwiper!" I says,
"Yes sir. Take a chair." "I come," says he "frrwom the Frrwench
Consul's." So I saw at once that it wasn't the Bank of England. "We
have rrweceived," says the gentleman turning his r's very curious and
skilful, "frrwom the Mairrwie at Sens, a communication which I will have
the honour to rrwead. Madame Lirrwiper understands Frrwench?" "O dear
no sir!" says I. "Madame Lirriper don't understand anything of the
sort." "It matters not," says the gentleman, "I will trrwanslate."

With that my dear the gentleman after reading something about a
Department and a Marie (which Lord forgive me I supposed till the Major
came home was Mary, and never was I more puzzled than to think how that
young woman came to have so much to do with it) translated a lot with the
most obliging pains, and it came to this:--That in the town of Sons in
France an unknown Englishman lay a dying. That he was speechless and
without motion. That in his lodging there was a gold watch and a purse
containing such and such money and a trunk containing such and such
clothes, but no passport and no papers, except that on his table was a
pack of cards and that he had written in pencil on the back of the ace of