;
don't be foolish, in your old days; my dear, we've spent the happiest of
our days in the kitchen; when we were first married, _Susan_, when our
whole stock in trade consisted of five ricketty chairs--"

"Well, that's enough about it--" interposed the lady.

"A plain old pine breakfast table--" continued Fitz.

"I'd stop, just THERE--" scowlingly said Mrs. Fitz.

"My father's old chest, and your mother's old corner cupboard--"
persevered the indefatigable monster.

"I'd go through the whole inventory--" angrily cried Mrs. Fitz--"clean
down to--"

"The few broken pots, pans, and dishes we had--"

"Don't you--_don't you feel ashamed of yourself_?" exclaims Mrs. Fitz,
about as full of anger as she could well contain; but Fitz keeps the
even tenor of his way.

"Not at all, my dear; Heaven forbid that I should ever forget a jot of
the real happiness of any portion of my life. When you and I, dear Sook
(an awful scowl, and a sudden change of her position, on her costly
rocking chair. Fitz looked askance at Mrs. Fitz, and proceeded); when
you and I, _Susan_, lived in Dowdy's little eight by ten 'blue frame,'
down in Pigginsborough; not a yard of carpet, or piece of mahogany, or
silver, or silk, or satin, or flummery of any sort, the five old
chairs--"

"Good conscience! are you going to have that over again?" cries Mrs.
Fitz, with the utmost chagrin.

"The old white pine table--"

Mrs. Fitz starts in horror.

"My father's old chest, and your mother's old corner cupboard!"

Mrs. Fitz, in an agony, walks the floor!

"The few broken or cracked pots, pans and dishes, we had--"

Nature quite "gin eout"--the exhausted Mrs. Fitzfaddle throws herself
down upon the sumptuous _conversazione_, and absorbs her grief in the
ample folds of a lace-wrought handkerchief (bought at Warren's--cost the
entire profits of ten quintals of Fitzfaddle & Co.'s A No. 1 cod!),
while the imperturbable Fitz drives on--

"Your mother's old cooking stove, Susan--the time and again, Susan, I've
sat in that little kitchen--"

Mrs. Fitzfaddle shudders all over. Each reminiscence, so dear to
Fitzfaddle, seems a dagger to her.

"With little Nanny--"

"You--you brute! You--you vulgar--you--you Fitzfaddle. Nanny! to call
your daughter N-Nanny!"

"Nanny! why, yes, Nanny--" says the matter-of-fact head of the firm of
Fitzfaddle & Co. "I believe we did intend to call the girl Nancy; we
_did_ call her Nanny, Mrs. Fitzfaddle; but, like all th