“So we are to ’ave a new lodger, Mithter Dibble, in the purthon of the bailifth’s son; well, so be it, though when my pa educated me for a lady, and being a builder he could do that because his property were naturally his own and if he had been thpared he would no doubt ’ave retired on it, educated for that thpere it never occurred to me that I should ’ave to take the hoffsprigs of bailifths into my house, but there is no knowing what we may come to, and if you fulfil the duties of the life which has come upon you, though without your own conthent I can’t see after all that there’s anything to be ashamed of,” said Mrs. Dibble to her husband after a tripe supper, on the evening when Mr. Richard Tallant had promised to meet his friend Gibbs at the club. “Yes, he be coming to-morrow; and I was thinking he might have the little back sittin’ room,” said Dibble, deferentially. “Thank you, Dib, for your thoughts, but I may remark, as I have remarked before, that _I_ will do the thinking; I did it for my pa during all his contracts, and made out the thpethifications which were for two railway bridges, and more than one or two streeth, and ith not unlikely that I shall be fully competent to think for you, Mithter Dibble; but, at the thame time, I will own that I had thought of the back thitting-room mythelf, and there’s a chest of drawers bed which Captain MacStrawsel, of the Blues, said was a perfect bed of roses; and it may, therefore, be fairly reckoned that a bailifth’s son may recline upon that which, if his conscience is at rest, he may repose upon as well as in a palace.” Mr. Dibble said “Yes,” and Mrs. Dibble mixed for him, as was her wont, a mild glass of gin, which he proceeded to sip in company with the accomplished partner of his bosom, who invariably said, whenever she took spirits publicly, “that it was not as she liked sperrits or any other allycholic liquors, but it were a necessity to her, seeing the great strain that was constant on her nerves, owing to having both mental and physical labour more than common.” After a short visit to the farm, Paul Somerton went to London, and, after due introduction to Mrs. Dibble, entered upon his duties at the Iron Company’s offices. He saw little of Mr. Richard Tallant, and less of his father; but he heard a great deal about both from old Dibble. Once a week Mrs. Dibble permitted Thomas to spend an evening out with Paul. She said she was not one for letting a young man run about London in an evening without a guide, and she thought her Thomas’s experience of the place might be of some benefit to Paul, and she would not hear of any opposition to an arrangement by which she proposed to set apart “closing time,” on Friday nights until half-past ten, for Thomas Dibble to show Paul Somerton some of the sights of London.