ple in Pumpington Wells; but
you flatter the good, if you think that when I dipped my pen in praise,
I limited my sketches to the virtuous of this place; and what is worse,
_you_ libel the bad if you assert that my sketches of vice were meant
personally to apply to the vicious who reside here."

"_I_ libel--_I_ assert!" said the old lady-like little man; "not
_I_!--every body says so!"

"You may laugh," replied my mentor and tormentor combined, "but
personality can be proved against you; and all the friends and relations
of Mr. Flaw declare you meant the bad man of your book for him."

"His friends and relations are too kind to him."

"Then you have an irregular character in your book, and Mrs. Blemish's
extensive circle of intimates assert that nothing can be more pointed
than your allusion to _her_ conduct and _her_ character."

"And pray what do these persons say about it themselves?"

"They are outrageous, and go about the town absolutely wild."

"Fitting the caps on themselves?"

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 eve