me, Alice; 'her face denotes good manners, a good heart, a good life.' Perhaps he meant good living; but that's what he said. 'I am going to ask madame to charge herself with an important trust for me, because I rely securely on her integrity.' Oh! he spoke beautiful, I can tell you. 'In case of my absence,' says he, 'from your respectable apartments, I will confide to you a sealed packet, to be delivered to a young man who will call for it at a certain hour on a certain day that I shall indicate before I leave. If the young man does not appear, I can trust madame to commit this packet to the flames.' He was fool enough to add," simpered Mrs. Dodge, looking a little conscious, "'that it was rare to see so much discretion joined to so much beauty,' or some such gammon; but of course I made no account of that."
"If he paid out his palaver so handsome," observed Slap-Jack, "take my word for it the chap's a papist."
But Mrs. Dodge would not hear of such a construction being put on her lodger's gallantry.
"Papist!" she repeated angrily; "no more a papist than you are! Why, I sent him up a slice o' powdered beef was last Friday, with a bit of garnishing, parsnips and what not, and he eats it up every scrap, and asks for another plateful. Papist! says you! and what if he were? I tell you if he was the Pope o' Rome, come to live respectable on my first floor, he's a sight more to my mind for a lodger than his friend the captain! Papists, indeed! If I wanted to lay my hand on a papist, I needn't to travel far for to seek one. Though, I will say, my lady's liker a hangel nor a Frenchwoman, and if all the papists was made up to her pattern, why for my part, I'd up and cry 'Bless the Pope!' with the rankest on 'em all!"
It was obvious that this northern district took no especial credit to itself for the bigotry of its Protestantism, and Mrs. Dodge, though a staunch member enough of the reformed religion, allowed no scruples of conscience to interfere with the gains of her hostelry, nor perhaps entertained any less kindly sentiments towards the persecuted members of the Church of Rome, that they formed some of her best customers, paying handsomely for
