Mrs. Sandboys no sooner caught sight of the “crackers,” than, breathless with indignation, she hurried back, on tiptoe, to her companion, and whispered in her ear, “My dear, there’s a woman in one of the beds!” “A wo——!” Mrs. Wewitz was about to scream, when Aggy placed her hand on the lady’s mouth. “Yes, a woman, my love! I tell tha I saw her curl-papers,” ejaculated Mrs. Sandboys, in a subdued tone of the deepest horror. “The wretches!” cried Mrs. Wewitz, “they’ll be the ruin of us all—they will; but I’ll soon have the hussy out!” and so saying she hurried towards the bed which Mrs. Sandboys had indicated; and seizing the sleeper by the shoulders, began shaking the individual violently. The suddenness and severity of the agitation roused the slumberer, when lifting his head up from under the clothes, he displayed to the terrified ladies a huge beard and pair of mustachios. “Its a brute of a man, after all!” screamed Mrs. Wewitz, as she let go the shoulders of the hirsute Parisian. “Goodness, gracious!” shrieked Mrs. Sandboys, and away they both scampered out of the apartment. As they hastened back to their sitting-room, they met Ann Lightfoot on one of the landings, and communicating to her what had happened, the girl begged to know whether the man’s beard was red? On being answered in the affirmative, she told the horror-stricken Mrs. Sandboys that it was the same man as had run after her the other night, and who assured her yesterday that he only wished he could have caught her; he’d have served her out finely. “He was the wust of the whole bunch,” Ann Lightfoot said. Mrs. Sandboys gave a faint scream, for, as she observed to Mrs. Wewitz, she shouldn’t wonder but what the nasty hairy brute of a fellow would be imagining that she was in love with him, and then what on earth would become of her! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII. “Do, walk in, gentlemen, walk in, The price is only threepence, We’re just a-going to begin— You two step in for fi’pence. You ne’er have seen in all your days, So fine a show as this is; Go where we will, it gains the praise Of gentlemen and misses. * * * * * “See hurdum-durdum, dust an’ din, Wi’ showman an’ physician, You’d think that they meeght Babel fin’ Class’d for a new edition.” _Cumberland Song._ The long-looked-for first of May, 1851, had at length arrived, and the morning was ushered in with merry peals from almost every steeple; afar off the drone of the thousand bells sounded like the boom of a huge gong—the signal, as it were, for the swarming of the Great Hive.