“Lud! Mr. ’Arry, ’ow you made me jump!”

It was unfortunate for Sally and her flirtation that this remark of hers should have occurred at the precise moment when Mr. Hempseed was collecting his breath, in order to deliver himself of one of those Scriptural utterances which had made him famous, for it brought down upon her pretty head the full flood of her father’s wrath.

“Now then, Sally, me girl, now then!” he said, trying to force a frown upon his good-humoured face, “stop that fooling with them young jackanapes and get on with the work.”

“The work’s gettin’ on all ri’, father.”

But Mr. Jellyband was peremptory. He had other views for his buxom daughter, his only child, who would in God’s good time become the owner of “The Fisherman’s Rest,” than to see her married to one of these young fellows who earned but a precarious livelihood with their net.

“Did ye hear me speak, me girl?” he said in that quiet tone, which no one inside the inn dared to disobey. “Get on with Lord Tony’s supper, for, if it ain’t the best we can do, and ’e not satisfied, see what you’ll get, that’s all.”

Reluctantly Sally obeyed.

“Is you ’xpecting special guests then to-night, Mr. Jellyband?” asked Jimmy Pitkin, in a loyal attempt to divert his host’s attention from the circumstances connected with Sally’s exit from the room.

“Aye! that I be,” replied Jellyband, “friends of my Lord Tony hisself. Dukes and duchesses from over the water yonder, whom the young lord and his friend, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, and other young noblemen have helped out of the clutches of them murderin’ devils.”

But this was too much for Mr. Hempseed’s querulous philosophy.

“Lud!” he said, “what they do that for, I wonder? I don’t ’old not with interferin’ in other folks’ ways. As the Scriptures say—”

“Maybe, Mr. ’Empseed,” interrupted Jellyband, with biting sarcasm, “as you’re a personal friend of Mr. Pitt, and as you says along with Mr. Fox: ‘Let ’em murder!’ says you.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Jellyband,” feebly protested Mr. Hempseed, “I dunno as I ever did.”

But Mr. Jellyband had at last succeeded in getting upon his favourite hobby-horse, and had no intention of dismounting in any hurry.

“Or maybe you’ve made friends with some of them French chaps ’oo they do say have come over here o’ purpose to make us Englishmen agree with their murderin’ ways.”

“I dunno what you mean, Mr. Jellyband,” suggested Mr. Hempseed, “all I know is—”

“All I know is,” loudly asserted mine host, “that there was my friend Peppercorn, ’oo owns the ‘Blue- Faced Boar,’ an’ as true and loyal an Englishman as you’d see in the land. And now look at ’im—’E made friends with some o’ them frog-eaters, ’obnobbed with them just as if they was Englishmen, and not just a lot of immoral, God-forsaking furrin’ spies. Well! and what happened? Peppercorn ’e now ups and talks of revolutions, and liberty, and down with the aristocrats, just like Mr. ’Empseed over ’ere!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Jellyband,” again interposed Mr. Hempseed feebly, “I dunno as I ever did—”