here. Feasting his eyes on the beautiful
out-doors does not prevent his attention to the slightest noise in the
wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content, but not stupidity, to all
the rest of the household.

I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging his long
arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with, "Well, I
declare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer's tract on the
philosophy of style but he loses much time in looking at the Young Lady,
who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her lap,--one of her
everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlasting friends. She is one
of the female patriots who save the post-office department from being
a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is thinking of the great
radical difference in the two sexes, which legislation will probably
never change; that leads a woman always, to write letters on her lap and
a man on a table,--a distinction which is commended to the notice of the
anti-suffragists.

The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the room
with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the picture-frames,
and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and is thawing the
snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the thermometer is 15
deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift across the main church
entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if it had gone
into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only ten persons at
the conference meeting last night, and seven of those were women; he
wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the parish,
anyhow.

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but
it is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about eleven
hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears the Mistress tell
the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a lecture on the
Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says that it is a first-rate
subject, if there were any such influence, and asks why he does n't take
a shovel and make a path to the gate. Mandeville says that, by George!
he himself should like no better fun, but it wouldn't look well for a
visitor to do it. The Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of
chaff, keeps on writing his wife's name.

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the soup-relief,
and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had