“I have been exthpecting to have a letter from him for several days,” she said, “and it was my hope that I should have got the charge of a set of chambers, with Thomas for porter; but they say the panic has done away with all that; and me and Mrs. Robinson, we have been into the city together for days, and to see the beautiful places as is to let, it do make one’s heart ache, though there must have been swindling to build such grand houses and then to fail; and I often think it is a mercy my dear pa is not alive, for he would to a certainty have lost his money in building some of those palaces.” “How long has your husband lived in Brazencrook?” Mr. Bales asked. “Well, six months now, come December, though the family hath moved about a good deal, firtht from London, in Pall Mall, where one of the directors of the Meter Works first got him the situation, and then they went to Bath, and after to Brazencrook: it wath not my wish that Thomas should return to the menial employment of his bachelor days, but losing my money was a sore affliction, and Dibble, he thaith, ‘Maria, I shall soon save money, and when the family is once settled in a place, which they expect soon to be, you can come and live in that town, wherever it is, and have your own little house, and I will sleep at home,’ which, Mr. Bales, was all the recompense he could make for the mithfortunes which have come upon us, and the change in that position of society in which my poor dear pa brought me up, being, as I dare thay I have told you, a builder, and having large contracts, he could do.” “Then you have not heard of Mr. Dibble’s recent efforts to restore a few hundred pounds of the lost money?” said the detective calmly, disregarding the injunctions of his prisoner. “A few hundred pounds!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, bursting a hook-and-eye and making no effort to remedy the accident. “Hath he rethcued that thum from the fire? Well, so he ought; for what with one thing and another he thertainly hath been my ruin, for we should never have been in the panic at all but for him, though how that bank came to fail ith a mythtery to me which will never be cleared up.” “He has not exactly rescued the money as you say; but if you will pay attention to me for a few minutes, I will explain the case.” “Thertainly, I will pay attention with great pleathure, and more particularly as you theem to have thome good news, you do nurse it so carefully, for if it was bad you would have out with it at wonth.” “No, it is not good news: it is bad news and good news together.” “Well, so that the good ith uppermotht, I can put up with a little bad,” said Mrs. Dibble, proceeding to readjust one of the little jaunty curls that ornamented each side of her fair fat face.