for 't! except auld Martha, and she's weel eneugh pleased wi' the freedom o' the berry-bushes to her sister's weans, when they come to drink tea in a holiday in the housekeeper's room, and wi' a wheen codlings now and then for her ain private supper."

XXXI

Fairservice on bees and the Sabbath

WHILE I paced the green alleys, debating these

things pro and con, I suddenly alighted upon Andrew Fairservice, perched up like a statue by a range of bee-hives, in an attitude of devout contemplation-one eye, however, watching the motions of the little irritable citizens, who were settling in their straw-thatched mansion for the evening, and the other fixed on a book of devotion, which much attrition had deprived of its corners, and worn into an oval shape; a circumstance which, with the close print and dingy colour of the volume in question, gave it an air of most respectable antiquity.

"I was e'en taking a spell o' worthy Mess John Quackleben's Flower of a Sweet Savour sawn on the Middenstead of this World," said Andrew, closing his book at my appearance, and putting his horn spectacles, by way of mark, at the place where he had been reading.

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"And the bees, I observe, were dividing your attention, Andrew, with the learned author?" 'They are a contumacious generation,” replied the gardener; "they hae sax days in the week to

hive on, and yet it's a common observe that they will aye swarm on the Sabbath-day, and keep folk at hame frae hearing the word-but there's nae preaching at Graneagain chapel the e'en-that's aye ae mercy.'

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"You might have gone to the parish church as I did, Andrew, and heard an excellent discourse." Clauts o' cauld parritch-clauts o' cauld parritch," replied Andrew, with a most supercilious sneer,-"gude eneuch for dogs, begging your honour's pardon-Ay! I might nae doubt hae heard the curate linking awa at it in his white sark yonder, and the musicians playing on whistles, mair like a penny-wedding than a sermon—and to the boot of that, I might hae gaen to even-song, and heard Daddie Docharty mumbling his mass— muckle the better I wad hae been o' that!

"Docharty!" said I (this was the name of an old priest, an Irishman, I think, who sometimes officiated at Osbaldistone-Hall)—" I thought Father Vaughan had been at the Hall. He was here yesterday."

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Ay," replied Andrew; "but he left it yestreen, to gang to Greystock, or some o' thae west-country haulds. There's an unco stir among them a' e'enow. They are as busy as my bees are-God sain them! that I suld even the puir things to the like o' papists. Ye see this is the second swarm, and whiles they will swarm off in the afternoon. The first swarm set off sune in the morning.—But I am thinking they are settled in their skeps for the night; sae I wuss your honour good-night, and grace, and muckle o't."

XXXII

Mr. Micawber on expenditure

"MY

Y dear young friend," said Mr. Micawber, "I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and-and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking that—in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the "-here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned-" the miserable wretch you behold."

"My dear Micawber!" urged his wife.

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"I say, returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, "the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do to-day. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!"

"My poor papa's maxim," Mrs. Micawber observed.

"My dear," said Mr. Micawber, “your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne'er shall-in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear;

and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense."

Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: “Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love." After which he was grave for a minute or so.

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My other piece of advice, Copperfield," said Mr. Micawber, "you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of Day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!"

To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.

XXXIII

Mr. Micawber begins a new life

"MY

Y dear Copperfield," said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his thumbs in each of his waistcoat pockets," the companion of my youth : if I may be allowed the expression-and my esteemed friend Traddles: if I may be permitted to call him so-will allow me, on the part of Mrs. Micawber, myself, and our offspring, to thank them in the warmest and most uncompromising terms for their good wishes. It may be expected that

on the eve of a migration which will consign us to a perfectly new existence," Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five hundred thousand miles, “I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I have said. Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium of the learned profession of which I am about to become an unworthy member, I shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated-through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoilI allude to spectacles-and possessing myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the God of Day is once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on the arrival of the four o'clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath-my name, Micawber!"

Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much

solemnity :

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One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and that is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles has, on two several occasions, 'put his name,' if I