"Here's to your excellent health, Mrs. Cloam, and as blooming as it
finds you now, ma'am! As pretty a tap as I taste since Christmas, and
another dash of malt would 'a made it worthy a'most to speak your health
in. Well, ma'am, a leetle drop in crystal for yourself, and then for
my business, which is to inquire after your poor dear health to-day.
Blooming as you are, ma'am, you must bear in mind that beauty is only
skin-deep, Mrs. Cloam; and the purtier a flower is, the more delicate it
grows. I've a-been a-thinking of you every night, ma'am, knowing how
you must 'a been put about and driven. The Admiral have gone down to the
village, and Miss Dolly to stare at the boats going out."

"Then I may speak a word for once at ease, Mr. Swipes, though the Lord
alone knows what a load is on my tongue. It requires a fine gardener,
being used to delicacy, to enter into half the worry we have to put up
with. Heroes of the Nile, indeed, and bucklers of the country! Why, he
could not buckle his own shoe, and Jenny Shanks had to do it for him.
Not that I blame him for having one arm, and a brave man he is to have
lost it, but that he might have said something about the things I got
up at a quarter to five every morning to make up for him. For cook is
no more than a smoke-jack, Mr. Swipes; if she keeps the joint turning,
that's as much as she can do."

"And a little too fond of good beer, I'm afeard," replied Mr. Swipes,
having emptied his pot. "Men's heads was made for it, but not women's,
till they come to superior stations in life. But, oh, Mrs. Cloam, what a
life we lead with the crotchets of they gentry!"

"It isn't that so much, Mr. Swipes, if only there was any way of giving
satisfaction. I wish everybody who is born to it to have the very best
of everything, likewise all who have fought up to it. But to make all