‘Dear! here’s another trouble,’ cried the poor woman.  ‘No—­none!’

‘Say, yes,’ said Mrs. Mel, and called Dandy, and charged him to run down the street to the square, and ask for the house of Mr. Coxwell, the maltster, and beg of him, in her name, a bottle of his ship’s rum.

’And don’t you tumble down and break the bottle, Dandy.  Accidents with spirit-bottles are not excused.’

Dandy went on the errand, after an energetic grunt.

In due time he returned with the bottle, whole and sound, and Mr. Coxwell’s compliments.  Mrs. Mel examined the cork to see that no process of suction had been attempted, and then said: 

’Carry it up to him, Dandy.  Let him see there’s a man in the house besides himself.’

‘Why, my dear,’ the landlady turned to her, ’it seems natural to you to be mistress where you go.  I don’t at all mind, for ain’t it my profit?  But you do take us off our legs.’

Then the landlady, warmed by gratitude, told her that the old gentleman was the great London brewer, who brewed there with his brother, and brewed for himself five miles out of Fallow field, half of which and a good part of the neighbourhood he owned, and his name was Mr. Tom Cogglesby.

‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Mel.  ‘And his brother is Mr. Andrew.’

’That ‘s it,’ said the landlady.  ’And because he took it into his head to go and to choose for himself, and be married, no getting his brother, Mr. Tom, to speak to him.  Why not, indeed?  If there’s to be no marrying, the sooner we lay down and give up, the better, I think.  But that ’s his way.  He do hate us women, Mrs. Harrington.  I have heard he was crossed.  Some say it was the lady of Beckley Court, who was a Beauty, when he was only a poor cobbler’s son.’

Mrs. Mel breathed nothing of her relationship to Mr. Tom, but continued from time to time to express solicitude about Dandy.  They heard the door open, and old Tom laughing in a capital good temper, and then Dandy came down, evidently full of ship’s rum.

‘He’s pumped me!’ said Dandy, nodding heavily at his mistress.

Mrs. Mel took him up to his bed-room, and locked the door.  On her way back she passed old Tom’s chamber, and his chuckles were audible to her.

‘They finished the rum,’ said Mrs. Hawkshaw.

‘I shall rate him for that to-morrow,’ said Mrs. Mel.  ’Giving that poor beast liquor!’

’Rate Mr. Tom!  Oh!  Mrs. Harrington!  Why, he’ll snap your head off for a word.’

Mrs. Mel replied that her head would require a great deal of snapping to come off.

During this conversation they had both heard a singular intermittent noise above.  Mrs. Hawkshaw was the first to ask: 

‘What can it be?  More trouble with him?  He’s in his bed-room now.’

‘Mad with drink, like Dandy, perhaps,’ said Mrs. Mel.

‘Hark!’ cried the landlady.  ‘Oh!’

It seemed that Old Tom was bouncing about in an extraordinary manner.  Now came a pause, as if he had sworn to take his rest:  now the room shook and the windows rattled.