--let fly a sharp arrow at _Molly Lowe_; and her forty years' frost melted before the youthful charms of James Wright--a drum-boy in the First or Grenadier Regiment of Foot Guards, commanded by his Royal Highness the Duke of York! The first notice her master received of this change in Molly Lowe's temperature he received in an anonymous letter, signed "Microscopicus;" which letter--after lamenting the multitude of sins that spring up everywhere like mushrooms--from the _button_ to the _broad black flap_, informed him that Molly Lowe had fallen in love with the little drummer aforesaid, and earnestly recommended him to nip her iniquity in the bud. "And you need not take my _ipse dixit_ in the matter at all," continued the letter of Mr. Microscopicus, "for if you will return home any evening unexpectedly, you will find _Molly_ and her _moppet_ junketing together on the contents of your larder." The master had little faith in this epistle; for, as he said, the thing was so improbable; and he was half inclined to think that Mr. Microscopicus was either some meddling methodistical miscreant, or some discarded lover of Molly's youthful days. But well knowing that nothing is impossible, and that more unlikely matrons than Molly have been entangled in the toils of love, he put the epistle in his pocket, and determined to keep a sharp look-out on Molly's movements in future. [Illustration: MOLLY LOWE.] Several days passed without his discovering anything; and he was just beginning to feel satisfied that Mr. Microscopicus was what he had supposed him to be, when, one evening, his curiosity was strangely excited by Molly's absence from her ordinary occupations.--What could be the meaning of it? Every time she was called, she came down from her bed-room, instead of up from the kitchen; and every time, she seemed more and more cross at being "call'd about so." "What _can_ you be doing up stairs so much, Molly?" said her master. "Nothing," replied Molly. "Then what makes you go there so often?--What--have--you--got in your head, Molly?" "Lord bless me, nothing!" was Molly's invariable reply; and at every succeeding question she grew more waspish than before. But her master was not satisfied with this simple nothing--he felt quite sure there must be something wrong. So, calling his shopmen together, he ascended with them to Molly Lowe's bed-room; and there, to Molly Lowe's confusion, he found the identical drummer stowed away like Falstaff, in a buck-basket! There he lay--sword, cap, and belt, complete, coil'd up hilt to point, head to heel, in the bottom of the buck-basket, and covered over with a mountain of foul clothes!--"It was a miracle he escaped suffocation!" The buck-basket stood in a little closet, and they drew him forth from his----but "comparisons are _odorous_,"--it is enough, that they pulled him out, set him up on end, and shook him well; and that the master, turning to Molly Lowe, said "Molly! Molly! I never could have expected