The little scarecrow shook his head once more; and declaring that we should see he had spoken too true, departed, and then lamented so fluently to every body the certainty of our being _cut_, that every body began to believe him. I have hinted that _my_ bonnets and my husband's plate occasioned heartburnings: no--that is not a correct term, the _heart_ has nothing to do with such exhalations--bile collects elsewhere. Those who had conspired to pull my husband from the throne of his popularity, because their parties excited in us no _party spirit_, and we abstained from hopping at their hops, found, to their consternation, that when the novelty of my _novel_ misdemeanour was at an end, we went on as if nothing had occurred. However, they still possessed heaven's best gift, the use of their tongues, they said of us everything bad which they knew to be false, and which they wished to see realized. Their forlorn hope was our "extravagance." "Never mind," said one, "Christmas must come round, and _then_ we shall see." When once the match of insinuation is applied to the train of rumoured difficulties, the suspicion that has been smouldering for awhile bounces at once into a _report_, and very shortly its echo is bounced in every parlour in a provincial town. Long bills, that had been accustomed to wait for payment until Christmas, now lay on my table at midsummer; and tradesmen, who drove dennetts to cottages once every evening, sent short civil notes, regretting their utter inability to make up a sum of money by Saturday night, unless _I_ favoured them, by the bearer, with the sum of ten pounds, "the amount of my little account." Dennett-driving drapers actually threatened to fail for the want of ten pounds!--pastry-cooks, who took their families regularly "to summer at the sea," assisted the _counter_-plot, and prematurely dunned my husband! It is not always convenient to pay sums at midsummer, which we had been in the habit of paying at Christmas; if, however, a single applicant was refused, a new rumour of inability was started and hunted through the town before night. People walked by our house, looking up wistfully at the windows; others peeped down the area, to see what we had for dinner. One _gentleman_ went to our butcher, to inquire how much we owed him; and one _lady_ narrowly escaped a legal action, because when she saw a few pipkins lying on the counter of a crockery-ware man, directed to me, she incautiously said, in the hearing of one of my servants, "Are you paid for your pipkins?--ah, it's well if you ever get your money!" Christmas came at last; bills were paid, and my husband did not owe a shilling in Pumpington Wells. Like the old ladies in the besieged city, the gossips looked at us, wondering when the havoc would begin.