in on your hands, you would not have as much heart for fun, I can tell
you that."

Hearing which, the young rascals tried to look sorrowful, and failed.

In the way of my profession I have met with many singular persons,
but I can safely declare I never met with any person so singular as
Miss Blake.

She was--I speak of her in the past tense, not because she is dead, but
because times and circumstances have changed since the period when we
both had to do with the Uninhabited House, and she has altered in
consequence--one of the most original people who ever crossed my path.

Born in the north of Ireland, the child of a Scottish-Ulster mother and
a Connaught father, she had ingeniously contrived to combine in her own
person the vices of two distinct races, and exclude the virtues of both.

Her accent was the most fearful which could be imagined. She had the
brogue of the West grafted on the accent of the North. And yet there
was a variety about her even in this respect. One never could tell,
from visit to visit, whether she proposed to pronounce "written" as
"wrutten" or "wretten";[Footnote: The wife of a celebrated Indian
officer stated that she once, in the north of Ireland, heard Job's
utterance thus rendered--"Oh! that my words were wr_u_tten, that they
were pr_e_nted in a b_u_ke."] whether she would elect to style her
parents, to whom she made frequent reference, her "pawpaw and mawmaw,"
or her "pepai and memai."

It all depended with whom Miss Blake had lately been most intimate. If