After such a fall as this, if I happened to speak below my mark, or not describe the gentry well, everybody must excuse me: for I went so low in my own esteem, that I could not have knocked even Anthony Stew's under-keeper down! I was making notes, here and there, already, concerning the matters at Sker House, and the delicate sayings of Bardie, not with any view to a story perfect and clear as this is, but for my own satisfaction in case of anything worth going on with. And but for this forethought, you could not have learned both her sayings and doings so bright as above. And now being taken away from it, I tried to find some one with wit enough to carry it on in my absence. In a populous neighbourhood this might have been; but the only man near us who had the conceit to try to carry it on a bit, fell into such a condition of mind that his own wife did not know him. But in spite of the open state of his head, he held on very stoutly, trying to keep himself up to the mark with ale, and even Hollands; until it pleased God that his second child should fall into the chicken-pox; and then all the neighbours spoke up so much--on account of his being a tailor--that it came to one thing or the other. Either he must give up his trade, and let his apprentice have it--to think of which was worse than gall and wormwood to his wife--or else he must give up all meddling with pen and ink and the patterns of chicken-pox. How could he hesitate, when he knew that the very worst tailor can make in a day as much as the best writer can in a month? Upon the whole I was pleased with this; for I never could bear that rogue of a snip, any more than he could put up with me for making my own clothes and Bunny's. I challenged him once on a buttonhole, for I was his master without a thimble. And for this ninth part of a man to think of taking up my pen!