The String of Pearls (1850), p. 677

"Ah, you will then have to attend upon me while I am here, my dear, I presume?"
"Yes, sir, if you please."
"Very good—very good. You are a nice young woman, and there's half-a-guinea for you. Eugh! I shall give you that sum every week while I stay here, you know."
"Lor, sir, will you?"
"Yes, yes. You can go now. Is the tea all right?"
"Oh, dear, yes; sir. You are very good indeed. Misses said as you was a very good lodger, which I knowed to mean as you didn't be petikler about your money, and now I sees you ain't. Thank you, sir, for me. I'll get up in the night if you want anythink."

CHAPTER CLIX.
TODD MAKES A VIGOROUS ATTEMPT TO REACH GRAVESEND.

The servant was so profuse in her acknowledgments for the half-guinea, that she seemed as if she would never get out of the room, and Todd had to say—
"There—there, that will do. Now leave me, my good girl—that will do," before she, with a curtsey at every step, withdrew.
"Well," she said, as she went down stairs. "If I tell misses of this, I'm a Prussian. Oh, dear, I keeps it to myself and says nothing to nobody, excepting to my Thomas as is in the horse- guards. Ah, he is a nice fellow, and out o'this I'll make him a present of a most elegant watch-ribbon, that he can put a bullet at the end of, and let it hang out of his fob all as if he had a real watch in his pocket." "Humph!" said Todd. "I have bought her good opinion cheap. It was well worth ten-and -sixpence not to have the servant watching me, with, for all I know to the contrary, eyes of suspicion—well worth it."
It was not very often that Todd indulged himself with a cup of tea. Something stronger was commonly more congenial to his appetite; but upon this occasion, after his long sleep, the tea had upon him a most refreshing effect, and he took it with real pleasure. Mrs. Hardman, in consideration of the guinea she had received beforehand, had done him justice, as far as the quality of the tea was concerned, and he had it good.
"Well," he said, after his third cup, "I did not think that there was so much virtue in a cup of tea, after all ; but of a surety, I feel wonderfully refreshed at it. How the wind blows."
The wind did indeed, blow, for all the while that Todd was taking his tea it banged and buffetted against the window at such a rate, that it was really quite a fearful thing to listen to it.
A couple of candles had been lighted and brought into the room, but the gale without soon laid hold of their little flames, and tossed them about so, that they gave but a dim and sepulchral kind of light.
Todd rose again, and went to the window—again he placed his face close to the pane of glass, and shading his eyes with his hands, he looked out. A dashing rain was falling.
"They say that when the rain comes the wind moderates," he muttered; "but I see no signs of that, yet. it is almost a gale already."
At that moment came such a gust of wind howling down the street, that Todd mechanically withdrew his head, as though t were some tangible enemy come to seek him.
"Always something to foil me here," he said; "always something
^A^irething to foil me here," he said J " always something; but out I must go. Let it look strange as it may be, I cannot stay a night in this house, for if I were to do so, that would involve staying a day likewise; and it