As for that Mr. Ned Twist, all I can say is, that if I could only have caught him, I should have told him a bit of my mind; and, as it was, I was as near as near could be, going round to the colonel of the regiment, and telling him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, to allow his men to go on in that way. For really there was some little excuse to be made for that stupid, conceited, highty-flighty, bit of goods of a Miss Susan of mine, for I’m sure the girl was head over ears in love with the gawky fellow, while he was only playing the fool with her. Every moment she could spare, there she was with a pen in her hand, scribbling a letter off to him, or else with a needle, making some shirts for the rip; and I declare, if she hadn’t gone to the expense of having his portrait cut out in black paper, and had paid at least eighteen pence extra for the sake of having the fellow’s mustachios and whiskers put in with a little trumpery bronze. Whenever, too, the minx could lay her hand upon any of my excellent jams or preserves, she would be sure to go making them up into pies or tarts, or something for that ogre of hers in a red coat; and once I found stowed away in the dresser-drawer a raspberry-jam tart, (we had had a roley-poley pudding for dinner the day before,) with a lot of open-work over it, and a small heart made out of pastry, and the initials E. T. in the same elegant material. A little while after this, I declare there was no possibility of getting that girl to do a single thing in the house, for it appears that bothering regiment was about to change its quarters. And there she was, sighing and crying away in secret, and going mooning about the place with her eyes as red as two brandy-balls. When I stepped round to Albany Street, to see Mrs. L--ckl--y, in the evening, she told me it was just the same with her Maria--as, indeed, she said, it was with the maids all down the street, on both sides of the way; and when I let fall, by accident, the name of Ned Twist, she knew it directly, and told me she verily believed the fellow supped in her kitchen twice a week at least. Her maid was going clean out of her mind, she said, for his sake--although she had told her, over and over again, that the fellow didn’t care two pins about her; for she, Mrs. L--ckl--y, knew for a positive fact that the good-looking glutton was all the while paying his addresses to the girls at both the pastrycooks in the street, as well as to the maid at the fruiterer’s over the way. Really, she said, there wasn’t a female servant in the whole street that hadn’t been spoiling her head of hair for the rogues, and she was sure that there would be as many locks given away on the day of the fellows’ departure as would stuff a decent-sized mattress; though how that general lover, Mr. Ned Twist, would ever be able to find enough hair for the whole of his sweethearts, was a mystery to her. For if he behaved to them all alike,