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The Chimes

will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down.”

“Most agreeable!” replied my Lady Bowley, “The worst man among them! He has been committing a robbery, I hope?”

“Why, no,” said Sir Joseph, referring to the letter. “Not quite. Very near. Not quite. He came up to London, it seems, to look for employment (trying to better himself—that’s his story), and being found at night asleep in a shed, was taken into custody, and carried next morning before the Alder­man. The Alderman observes (very properly) that he is deter­mined to put this sort of thing down; and that if it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down, he will be happy to begin with him.”

“Let him be made an example of, by all means,” returned the lady. “Last winter, when I introduced pinking and eyelet-holing among the men and boys in the village, as a nice evening employment, and had the lines,
O let us love our occupations. Bless the squire and his relations. Live upon our daily rations. And always know our proper stations,
set to music on the new system, for them to sing the while; this very Fern—I see him now—touched that hat of his, and said, “I humbly ask your pardon, my lady, but an’t something different from a great girl?’ I expected it, of course; who can expect anything but insolence and ingratitude from that class

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