The day was a wet one, and the gutter ran with liquid mud.

Mrs.Trapp recovered her balance, slipped off her pattens, and stamped them on the back of his scarlet coat--two oval O's for him to walk about with.
Those were days, too, which kept our Plymouth stones rattling.
Besides the coaches--the "Quicksilver," which carried the mails and a coachman and guard in scarlet liveries, the humdrum "Defiance" and the dashing "Subscription" or "Scrippy" post-chaises came and went continually, whisking naval officers between us and London with dispatches: and sometimes the whole populace turned out to cheer as trains of artillery wagons, escorted by armed seamen, marines, and soldiers, horse and foot, rumbled up from Dock towards the Citadel with treasure from some captured frigate.

I could tell, too, of the great November Fair in the Market Place, and the rejoicings on the King's Jubilee, when I paid a halfpenny to go inside the huge hollow bonfire built on the Hoe: but all this would keep me from my story-- for which I must hark back to Miss Plinlimmon.
For many months I heard nothing of this dear lady, and it seemed that I had parted from her for ever, when one evening as I returned from carrying a bag of soot out to Mutley Plain (where a market-gardener wanted some for his beds), Mrs.Trapp put into my hands a letter addressed in the familiar Italian hand to "H.

Revel, residing with Mr.S.Trapp, House Renovator, near the Barbican." It ran: "My dearest Harry,--I wonder if, amid your new avocations, you will take the pleasure in the handwriting of an _old friend_?
I remember you many times daily, and often when I wake in the night; and commend you to God morning and evening, kneeling on the place where your cot used to stand, for I have no one now to care for in my room.

There is little change in our life here; though Mr.Scougall, as I foreboded, takes less heart in his ministrations, and I should not wonder if he retired before long.