h, but his pen begins prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know
what you are thinking--you're thinking this is a squirt. That word has
taken the nonsense out of a good many high-stepping fellows. But it did
a good deal of harm too, and it was a vulgar lot that applied it
oftenest.

I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady has no designs on the
Capitalist, and as well convinced that any fancy of mine that he was like
to make love to her was a mistake. The good woman is too much absorbed
in her children, and more especially in "the Doctor," as she delights to
call her son, to be the prey of any foolish desire of changing her
condition. She is doing very well as it is, and if the young man
succeeds, as I have little question that he will, I think it probable
enough that she will retire from her position as the head of a
boarding-house. We have all liked the good woman who have lived with
her,--I mean we three friends who have put ourselves on record. Her
talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely
correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is subject
to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvulsive upheavals when she reverts in
memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls the virtues of
her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such as one finds not
rarely annexed to a capable matron in charge of an establishment like
hers; that is to say, an easy-going, harmless, fetch-and-carry,
carve-and-help, get-out-of-the-way kind of neuter, who comes up three
times (as they say drowning people do) every day, namely, at breakfast,
dinner, and tea, and disappears, submerged beneath the waves of life,
during the intervals of these events.

It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of a kindly nature
enough, according to my own reckoning, to watch the good woman, and see
what looks of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, and how,
in spite of herself, the maternal feeling betrays its influence in her
dispensations of those delicacies which are the exceptional element in
our entertainments. I will not say that Benjamin's mess, like his
Scripture namesake's, is five times as large as that of any of the
others, for this would imply either an economical distribution to the
guests in general or heaping the poor young man's plate in a way that
would spoil the appetite of an Esquimau, but you may be sure he fares
well if anybody does; and I