when she sees me, and gathers all her children about her, rushes into
the nursery whenever I pay that little seminary a visit, and actually
slapped poor little Frank's ears one day when I was teaching him to ride
upon the back of a Newfoundland dog.

"George," said my brother to me the last time I paid him a visit at the
old hall, "don't be angry, my dear fellow, but Maria is in a--hum--in
a delicate situation, expecting her--hum"--(the eleventh)--"and do
you know you frighten her? It was but yesterday you met her in the
rookery--you were smoking that enormous German pipe--and when she came
in she had an hysterical seizure, and Drench says that in her situation
it's dangerous. And I say, George, if you go to town you'll find a
couple of hundred at your banker's." And with this the poor fellow shook
me by the hand, and called for a fresh bottle of claret.

Afterwards he told me, with many hesitations, that my room at Boodle
Hall had been made into a second nursery. I see my sister-in-law in
London twice or thrice in the season, and the little people, who have
almost forgotten to call me uncle George.

It's hard, too, for I am a lonely man after all, and my heart yearns to
them. The other day I smuggled a couple of them into my chambers, and
had a little feast of cream and strawberries to welcome them. But it had
like to have cost the nursery-maid (a Swiss girl that Fitz-Boodle hired
somewhere in his travels) her place. My step-mamma, who happened to be
in town, came flying down in her chariot, pounced upon the poor thing
and the children in the midst of the entertainment; and when I asked
her, with rather a bad grace to be sure, to take a chair and a share of
the feast--"Mr. Fitz-Boodle," said she, "I am not accustomed to sit
down in a place that smells of tobacco like an ale-house--an ale-house