gabble on so while you are in limbo?"

"Ah, dear dame," said Paul, "we can't help these rubs and stumbles on our
road to preferment!"

"Road to the scragging-post!" cried the dame. "I tells you, child,
you'll live to be hanged in spite of all my care and 'tention to you,
though I hedicated you as a scholard, and always hoped as how you would
grow up to be an honour to your--"

"King and country," interrupted Paul. "We always say, honour to king and
country, which means getting rich and paying taxes. 'The more taxes a
man pays, the greater honour he is to both,' as Augustus says. Well,
dear dame, all in good time."

"What! you is merry, is you? Why does not you weep?

Your heart is as hard as a brickbat. It looks quite unnatural and
hyena-like to be so _devil-me-careish!" So saying, the good dame's
tears gushed forth with the bitterness of a despairing Parisina.

"Nay, nay," said Paul, who, though he suffered far more intensely, bore
the suffering far more easily than his patroness, "we cannot mend the
matter by crying. Suppose you see what can be done for me. I dare say
you may manage to soften the justice's sentence by a little 'oil of
palms;' and if you can get me out before I am quite corrupted,--a day or
two longer in this infernal place will do the business,--I promise you
that I will not only live honestly myself, but with people who live in
the same manner."