hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What
he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the
juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot be
performed without it. Returning from her wretched journey to her
wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from easy-going
Diaper,--a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom
writing metrically now, he took to talking it. With a fluent sympathetic
tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her interests by these
proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to elucidate wherefore.
Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her that the poverty
she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle nurture, and that he had
reason to believe--could assure her--that an annuity was on the point of
being granted her by her husband. And Diaper broke his bud of a smile
into full flower as he delivered this information. She learnt that he
had applied to her husband for money. It is hard to have one's prop of
self-respect cut away just when we are suffering a martyr's agony at the
stake. There was a five minutes' tragic colloquy in the recesses behind
the scenes,--totally tragic to Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in
the warm sun of that annuity, and re-emerge from his state of grub. The
lady then wrote the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister. The
atmosphere behind the scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost,
we will return and face the curtain.

That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had
furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect was
considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time
quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second invitation to
Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own age to rub his
excessive vitality against, and wanted none. His hands were full enough
with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father and he were heart in heart. The