It has rolled on in the same unvarying and benevolent course for many years now, and must at no distant period be brought to its final close.

She looks forward to its termination, with calmness and without apprehension.

She has everything to hope and nothing to fear.
A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady's next-door neighbours.
He is an old naval officer on half-pay, and his bluff and unceremonious behaviour disturbs the old lady's domestic economy, not a little.

In the first place, he _will_ smoke cigars in the front court, and when he wants something to drink with them--which is by no means an uncommon circumstance--he lifts up the old lady's knocker with his walking-stick, and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed over the rails.

In addition to this cool proceeding, he is a bit of a Jack of all trades, or to use his own words, 'a regular Robinson Crusoe;' and nothing delights him better than to experimentalise on the old lady's property.