And as for a glass of good wine--oh Lord! my timbers will be broken up, before it comes to mend them.

And when I come home for even half an hour, there is all this small rubbish to attend to.

I must have Frank home, to take this stuff off my hands, or else keep what I abominate, a private secretary." Among the pile of letters that had lain unopened was one which he left to the last, because he disliked both the look and the smell of it.

A dirty, ugly scrawl it was, bulged out with clumsy folding, and dabbed with wax in the creases.

With some dislike he tore it open; and the dislike became loathing, as he read: "Hon'd Sir.