, chain and seal-ring? To be
sure! when Mr. BUMSTEAD was in yesterday for the regular daily new
crystal in his own watch--how _does_ he break so many!--_he_ said that
his beloved nephews wore only watches and rings, or he would buy paste
breastpins for them. Your oroide is now wound up, Mr. DROOD, and set at
twenty minutes past Two.

"Dear old JACK!" thinks EDWIN to himself, pocketing his watch as he
walks away; "he thinks just twice as much of me as any one else in the
world, and I should feel doubly grateful."

As dusk draws on, the young fellow, returning from a long walk, espies
an aged Irish lady leaning against a tree on the edge of the turnpike,
with a pipe upside-down in her mouth, and her bonnet on
wrong-side-afore.

"Are you sick?" he asks kindly.

"Divil a sick, gintlemen," is the answer, with a slight catch of the
voice,--"bless the two of yez!"

EDWIN DROOD can scarcely avoid a start, as he thinks to himself, "Good
Heaven! how much like JACK!"

"Do you eat cloves, madame?" he asks, respectfully.

"Cloves is it, honey? ah, thin, I do that, whin I'm expectin' company.
Odether-nodether, but I've come here the day from New York for nothing.
Sure phat's the names of you two darlints?"

"EDWIN," he answers, in some wonder, as he hands her a currency stamp,
which, on account of the large hole worn in it, he has been repeatedly
unable to pass himself.

"EDDY is it? Och hone, och hone, machree!" exclaims the venerable woman,
hanging desolately around the tree by her arms while her bonnet falls
over her left ear: "I've heard that name threatened. Och, acushla
wirasthu!"

Believing that the matron will be less agitated if left alone, and,
probably, able to get a little roadside sleep, EDWIN DROOD passes onward
in deep thought. The boarding-house is reached, and _he_ enters.

J. BUMSTEAD'S day of the dinner is also marked by exhilarating
experiences. With one coat-tail unwittingly tucked far up his back, so
that it seems to be amputated, and his alpaca umbrella under his arm, he
enters a grocery-store of the village, and abstractedly asks how
strawberries are selling to-day? Upon being reminded that fresh fruit is
very scarce in late December, he changes his purpose, and orders two
bottles of Bourbon flavoring-extract sent to his address. And now he
wishes to know what they are charging for sponges? They tell him that he
must seek those articles at the druggist's, and he compromises by
requesting that fo