What he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot be performed without it.

Returning from her wretched journey to her wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from easy-going Diaper,--a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom writing metrically now, he took to talking it.

With a fluent sympathetic tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her interests by these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to elucidate wherefore.

Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle nurture, and that he had reason to believe--could assure her--that an annuity was on the point of being granted her by her husband.

And Diaper broke his bud of a smile into full flower as he delivered this information.