“She aint no fool at all; and I’d do the same if I was there, and so’d you, John. There is nothing Mackenzie’d ask as he wouldn’t give him,” said Mrs. Grimes, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder to her husband, who was standing on the hearth-rug;--“that is, in the way of drawing liquor, and refreshments, and such like. But he never raised a glass to his lips in this house as he didn’t pay for, nor yet took a biscuit out of that basket. He’s a gentleman all over, is Mackenzie.” It was strong testimony; but still we had not quite got at the bottom of the matter. “Doesn’t he raise a great many glasses to his lips?” we asked. “No he don’t,” said Mrs. Grimes,--“only in reason.” “He’s had misfortunes,” said Mr. Grimes. “Indeed he has,” said the lady,--“what I call the very troublesomest of troubles. If you was troubled like him, John, where’d you be?” “I know where you’d be,” said John. “He’s got a bad wife, Sir; the worst as ever was,” continued Mrs. Grimes. “Talk of drink;--there is nothing that woman wouldn’t do for it. She’d pawn the very clothes off her children’s back in mid-winter to get it. She’d rob the food out of her husband’s mouth for a drop of gin. As for herself,--she aint no woman’s notions left of keeping herself any way. She’d as soon be picked out of the gutter as not;--and as for words out of her mouth or clothes on her back, she hasn’t got, Sir, not an item of a female’s feelings left about her.” Mrs. Grimes had been very eloquent, and had painted the “troublesomest of all troubles” with glowing words. This was what the wretched man had come to by marrying a woman who was not a lady in order that he might escape the “conventional thraldom” of gentility! But still the drunken wife was not all. There was the evidence of his own nose against himself, and the additional fact that he had acknowledged himself to have been formerly a drunkard. “I suppose he has drunk, himself?” we said. “He has drunk, in course,” said Mrs. Grimes. “The world has been pretty rough with him, Sir,” said Mr. Grimes. “But he don’t drink now,” continued the lady. “At least if he do, we don’t see it. As for her, she wouldn’t show herself inside our door.” “It aint often that man and wife draws their milk from the same cow,” said Mr. Grimes. “But Mackenzie is here every day of his life,” said Mrs. Grimes. “When he’s got a sixpence to pay for it, he’ll come in here and have a glass of beer and a bit of something to eat. We does make him a little extra welcome, and that’s the truth of it. We knows what he is, and we knows what he was. As for book learning, Sir;--it don’t matter what language it is, it’s all as one to him. He knows ’em all round just as I know my catechism.” “Can’t you say fairer than that for him, Polly?” asked Mr. Grimes.