present occasion, as two or three inhabitants appeared, who, like
me, threatened to maintain the housekeeper's side of the question.
He therefore took his leave, muttering that he had always heard the
Scots were a nasty people, but had no idea they carried it so far
as to choose to have the floors of their palaces blood boltered, like
Banquo's ghost, when to remove them would have cost but a hundred
drops of the Infallible Detergent Elixir, prepared and sold by
Messrs. Scrub and Rub, in five shilling and ten shilling bottles,
each bottle being marked with the initials of the inventor, to
counterfeit which would be to incur the pains of forgery.

Freed from the odious presence of this lover of cleanliness, my
good friend Mrs. Policy was profuse in her expressions of thanks;
and yet her gratitude, instead of exhausting itself in these
declarations, according to the way of the world, continues as lively
at this moment as if she had never thanked me at all. It is owing
to her recollection of this piece of good service that I have the
permission of wandering, like the ghost of some departed gentleman
usher, through these deserted halls, sometimes, as the old Irish
ditty expresses it--

Thinking upon things that are long enough ago;

--and sometimes wishing I could, with the good luck of most editors
of romantic narrative, light upon some hidden crypt or massive
antique cabinet, which should yield to my researches an almost
illegible manuscript, containing the authentic particulars of some
of the strange deeds of those wild days of the unhappy Mary.

My dear Mrs. Baliol used to sympathise with me when I regretted