Supposing you are a bird, with an inordinate appetite for worms, it is good to rise early, no doubt; but if you are a worm it is better that you should not rise at the time when the early birds are congregated for breakfast. Eight or nine o’clock is quite soon enough to begin the day if you have to begin it in misery; and if you have happiness before you all day long, you cannot get up too early to enjoy it. Now Mrs. Dibble had a hard day before her, and not a particularly happy one, and she rose early at the call of duty; but she might just as well have had another hour’s peaceful rest, for she was doomed to begin a day of more than ordinary trial. Shuffleton Gibbs also rose earlier than usual on this eventful day, and it was well, for his own comfort, that he did do so, as a certain bird of very “taking” habits only found out his place of residence at a later hour of the morning, and would have demolished him had he not sneaked away from his customary locality an hour or so earlier. So you see, whether we are birds or worms, we cannot count our chances of success or safety by our early rising. A certain worm may rise too early for the particular bird which is waiting for him, or he may lie abed just long enough to be snapped up by a late and luxurious cormorant; so, though the early bird may pick up the early worm, yet the lazy bird may also encounter the worm that is late. The meaning of this is that proverbs are not necessarily the most truthful and useful things in the world, though Mrs. Dibble discovered some truth in the axiom, that “it can’t rain but it pours.” A series of short, sharp screams were the earliest indications of something wrong in the Dibbleonian household on this morning of the “gude man’s” departure. Mrs. Dibble got up, as we have intimated, rather earlier than usual, for the purpose of preparing breakfast with her own hands, scorning to trust certain little delicacies of bacon and kidneys to her diminutive servant. The sight of her extempore bed undisturbed and with no Thomas in it gave her a dreadful turn, as she explained afterwards, and that writing on the table with his confession in it might have knocked her down with a feather. So she screamed aloud, and as soon as she heard footsteps on the stairs she composed her morning gown into becoming folds, and posed herself for a comfortable faint upon the previously unpressed bed. Mr. Somerton was the first to put in an appearance, then came Paul, and in a few minutes his sister Amy, all more or less frightened by Mrs. Dibble’s screams. Mr. Somerton took the paper from her hands, read aloud the big open letters, and expressed his satisfaction in unmistakable language. Amy threw her arms round Paul’s neck, and at the same moment her father threw a jug of cold water into Mrs. Dibble’s face, which roused that lady up in a fit of passion and indignation.