While this was doing, Mr.Trapp would smoke his pipe and watch and assure me that mine were the "growing-pains" natural to sweeps, and Mrs.Trapp (without meaning it in the least) lamented the fate which had tied her for life to one.

"It being well known that my birthday is the 15th of the month and its rightful motto in Proverbs thirty-one, 'She riseth also while it is yet night and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens'; and me never able to hire a gel at eight pounds a year even!" "If you did," retorted Mr.Trapp, "I don't see you turning out at midnight to feed her." Early in June this high-tide of business slackened, and by the close of the second week we were moderately idle.

On Midsummer morning I descended to find, to my vast astonishment, Mr.Trapp seated at table before a bowl of bread and milk and wearing a thick blue guernsey tucked inside his trousers, the waist of which reached so high as to reduce his braces to mere shoulder-straps.

I could not imagine why he, a man given to perspiration, should add to his garments at this season.
Breakfast over, he beckoned me to the door and jerked his thumb towards the lintel.

The usual, sign had been replaced by a shorter one: "S.