tor, or the drop of physic, or the bit of bread? Do I never
read how they grow heartsick of it and give it up, after having let
themselves drop so low, and how they after all die out for want of help?
Then I say, I hope I can die as well as another, and I'll die without
that disgrace.'

Absolutely impossible my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards, by
any stretch of legislative wisdom to set these perverse people right in
their logic?

'Johnny, my pretty,' continued old Betty, caressing the child, and
rather mourning over it than speaking to it, 'your old Granny Betty is
nigher fourscore year than threescore and ten. She never begged nor had
a penny of the Union money in all her life. She paid scot and she
paid lot when she had money to pay; she worked when she could, and
she starved when she must. You pray that your Granny may have strength
enough left her at the last (she's strong for an old one, Johnny), to
get up from her bed and run and hide herself and swown to death in a
hole, sooner than fall into the hands of those Cruel Jacks we read of
that dodge and drive, and worry and weary, and scorn and shame, the
decent poor.'

A brilliant success, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards to
have brought it to this in the minds of the best of the poor! Under
submission, might it be worth thinking of at any odd time?

The fright and abhorrence that Mrs Betty Higden smoothed out of her
strong face as she ended this diversion, showed how seriously she had
meant it.

'And does he work for you?' asked the Secretary, gently bringing the
discourse back to Master or Mister Sloppy.

'Yes,' said Betty with a good-humoured smile and nod of the head. 'And
well too.'

'Does he live here?'

'He lives more here than anywhere. He was thought to be no better than a
Natural, and first come to me as a Minder. I made interest with Mr Blogg
the Beadle to have him as a Minder, seeing him by chance up at church,
and thinking I might do something with him. For he was a weak ricketty
creetur then.'

'Is he called by his right name?'

'Why, you see, speaking quite correctly, he has no right name. I always
understood he took his name from being found on a Sloppy night.'

'He seems an amiable fellow.'

'Bless you, sir, there's not a bit of him,' returned Betty, 'that's not
amiable. So you may judge how amiable he is, by running your eye along
his heighth.'

Of an ungainly make was Sloppy. Too much of him longwise, too li