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A few days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. Helmore, in which he said, "I am afraid 'Charlie' is already tired of playing at postman, for to all our questions about you last Thursday, he would only rap out, 'Fiddle-de-dee.'"

The return message from them which "Charlie" spelled out for us on the second Tuesday, was: "Tell her London is a desert without her," to which I emphatically, if not elegantly, answered, "Fiddle-de-dee!"

There were these at Stirhampton, men who were rude and said it was all fiddle-de-dee when Mrs. Fretchett said it was scandalum magnatum--a plain and unmannerly contradiction--and made themselves otherwise unpleasant.

FIDDLE-DE-DEE, fiddle-de-dee, The fly shall marry the humble-bee; They went to church and married was she, The fly has married the humble-bee.

If, now that all is not well with her, I attempt to repudiate the solemn engagements into which I then entered----" "Fiddle-de-dee! solemn engagements indeed!