bein' a scholar'd, I speaks English, I 'opes, my mother's second cousin
'avin' 'ad first prize at a spellin' bee, tho' 'e died early through
brain fever, 'avin' crowded 'is 'ead over much with the dictionary."

"Dear me!" answered Brian, mechanically. "How unfortunate!" He was not
listening to Mrs. Sampson's remarks. He suddenly remembered an
arrangement which Madge had made, and which up till now had slipped his
memory.

"Mrs. Sampson," he said, turning round at the door, "I am going to
bring Mr. Frettlby and his daughter to have a cup of afternoon tea
here, so you might have some ready."

"You 'ave only to ask and to 'ave," answered Mrs. Sampson, hospitably,
with a gratified crackle of all her joints. "I'll make the tea, sir,
an' also some of my own perticler cakes, bein' a special kind I 'ave,
which my mother showed me. 'ow to make, 'avin' been taught by a lady as
she nussed thro' the scarlet fever, tho' bein' of a weak constitootion,
she died soon arter, bein' in the 'abit of contractin' any disease she
might chance on."

Brian hurried off lest in her Poe-like appreciation of them, Mrs.
Sampson should give vent to more charnel-house horrors.

At one period of her life, the little woman had been a nurse, and it
was told of her that she had frightened one of her patients into
convulsions during the night by narrating to her the history of all the
corpses she had laid out. This ghoul-like tendency in the end proved
fatal to her professional advancement.