Some dozen years ago, my family being absent in a distant part of the country, and my business detaining me in London, I remained in my own house with three servants on board wages.  I used only to breakfast at home; and future ages will be interested to know that this meal used to consist, at that period, of tea, a penny roll, a pat of butter, and, perhaps, an egg.  My weekly bill used invariably to be about fifty shillings; so that, as I never dined in the house, you see, my breakfast, consisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cost about seven shillings and threepence per diem.  I must, therefore, have consumed daily—­

s. d.  A quarter of a pound of tea (say) 1 3 A penny roll (say) 1 0 One pound of butter (say) 1 3 One pound of lump sugar 1 0 A new-laid egg 2 9

Which is the only possible way I have for making out the sum.

Well, I fell ill while under this regimen, and had an illness which, but for a certain doctor, who was brought to me by a certain kind friend I had in those days, would, I think, have prevented the possibility of my telling this interesting anecdote now a dozen years after.  Don’t be frightened, my dear madam; it is not a horrid, sentimental account of a malady you are coming to—­only a question of grocery.  This illness, I say, lasted some seventeen days, during which the servants were admirably attentive and kind; and poor John, especially, was up at all hours, watching night after night—­amiable, cheerful, untiring, respectful, the very best of Johns and nurses.

Twice or thrice in the seventeen days I may have had a glass of eau sucree—­say a dozen glasses of eau sucree—­certainly not more.  Well, this admirable, watchful, cheerful, tender, affectionate John brought me in a little bill for seventeen pounds of sugar consumed during the illness—­“Often ‘ad sugar and water; always was a callin’ for it,” says John, wagging his head quite gravely.  You are dead, years and years ago, poor John—­so patient, so friendly, so kind, so cheerful to the invalid in the fever.  But confess, now, wherever you are, that seventeen pounds of sugar to make six glasses of eau sucree was a little too strong, wasn’t it, John?  Ah, how frankly, how trustily, how bravely he lied, poor John!  One evening, being at Brighton, in the convalescence, I remember John’s step was unsteady, his voice thick, his laugh queer—­and having some quinine to give me, John brought the glass to me—­not to my mouth, but struck me with it pretty smartly in the eye, which was not the way in which Dr. Elliotson had intended his prescription should be taken.  Turning that eye upon him, I ventured to hint that my attendant had been drinking.  Drinking!  I never was more humiliated at the thought of my own injustice than at John’s reply.  “Drinking!  Sulp me!  I have had only one pint of beer with my dinner at one o’clock!”—­and he retreats, holding on by a chair.  These are