“Oh, don’t bother me; you’re drunk.”  Then, with an air of outraged dignity, and with a stern solemnity, which, if he had not wobbled in his gait and stammered in his utterance, might have suggested the idea that he had just been appointed Professor of Philosophy for the Midland Districts, he delivered an oration:  “Now just you listen to me.  Do you suppose as a Mighty Power ’ud mak the barley to grow, and the ‘ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other parties to mak’ ’em foment, and me not meant to drink ’em? why, you know no-at!” Whereupon the apt rejoinder:  “I know this—­that a Mighty Power never meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and turn yoursen into a be-ast.”

Nobbut is still common in these parts, in abbreviation of “nothing but.”  I congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the doctor, and he said dolefully, “Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir—­but it’s nobbut th’ ’prentice.”

My limits do not allow me to mind my L’s and Q’s and R’s, or I might have enlarged upon such words as palaver, and pawling, and peart, and prod, and_romper_, and ramshackle, and rawm; and I can only dwell upon one selection from the S’s, of which there is a long Sigmatismus, such as snag ("Billy and Sally’s always at snags"), and scuft, and scrawl ("he wor’ just a glass over the scrawl,” i.e. the line of sobriety), and scrawm, and slape, and snigger, and slive ("I see that shack a-sliving_ and a_-skulking about"), and slare, and_slawmy_, and sneck, and snoozle, and spank, and stodge, and stunt, and swish.

The word which I would illustrate is skimpy.  It signifies something mean and defective; and in the following history, told to me by a clerical friend, it refers to an attenuated and bony female.  When a curate in a remote country parish, he took a raw village lad into his service, to train him for some better place; and, when his education was sufficiently advanced, and he had made some progress in the art of writing, he was permitted to accompany his master to a large dinner-party given by a neighbouring squire.  Next morning he communicated his experiences to the housekeeper, and she treacherously repeated them to my friend. “‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it just wor’ grand.  Me and t’other gentlemen in livery we stood i’ th’ ’all, and they flung open folding-doors, and out comes the quality tu and tu, harm i’ harm, all a-talking and a-grinning, and as smart as ninepence.  I wor’ quite surprised at mestur.  He come out last of all, with a skimpyold woman.  I should say she wor’ sisty off, and there were squire’s daughter, looking as bewtifle as bewtifle, and dressed up as gay as waxwork.  I never made no mistake, except giving one gentleman mustard wrong side, and just a drop or so o’ gravy down a hunbeknown