old Burge and Mrs. Dixon,
hearing all quiet, came in out of the kitchen.

"Don't you be alarmed on my account, my dear," he ses, turning to 'is
wife; "it's child's play to wot I've been used to. I'll just see these
two mistaken young fellers off the premises, and then we'll 'ave a cup o'
tea while the old man minds the bar."

Mrs. Dixon tried to speak, but 'er temper was too much for 'er. She
looked from her 'usband to Charlie and Bob and then back at 'im agin and
caught 'er breath.

"That's right," ses Dixon, nodding his 'ead at her. "I'm master and
owner of the Blue Lion and you're first mate. When I'm speaking you keep
quiet; that's dissipline."

I was in that bar about three months arterward, and I never saw such
a change in any woman as there was in Mrs. Dixon. Of all the
nice-mannered, soft-spoken landladies I've ever seen, she was the best,
and on'y to 'ear the way she answered her 'usband when he spoke to 'er
was a pleasure to every married man in the bar.

[Illustration: "The way she answered her 'usband was a pleasure to every
married man in the bar."]

A SPIRIT OF AVARICE

Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air of lofty
disdain. He was a free-born Englishman, and yet he had been summarily
paid off at eleven o'clock in the morning and told that his valuable
services would no longer be required. More than that, the foreman had
passed certain strictures upon his features which, however true they
might be, were quite irrelevant to the fact that Mr. Blows had been
discovered slumbering in a shed when he should have been laying bricks.

[Illustration: "Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air
of lofty disdain."]

"Take your ugly face off these 'ere works," said the foreman; "take it
'ome and bury it in the back-yard. Anybody'll be glad to lend you a
spade."

Mr. Blows, in a somewhat fluent reply, reflected severely on the
foreman's immediate ancestors, and the strange lack of good-feeling and
public spirit they had exhibited by allowing him to grow up.

"Take it 'ome and bury it," said the foreman again. "Not under any
plants you've got a liking for."

"I suppose," said Mr. Blows, still referring to his foe's parents, and
now endeavouring to make excuses for them--"I s'pose they was so pleased,
and so surprised when they found that you was a 'uman being, that they
didn't mind anything else."

He walked off with his head in the air, and the ot