have you, ma'am, with three children?"

[Illustration: "Three children?" gruffly responded the old gentleman.
"Ah, umph, what business have you, ma'am, with three
children?"--_Page_ 393.]

The widow, not apparently able to answer such a poser, the old gentleman
continued:

"Poor widows, poor people of any kind, have no business with
_incumbrances_, ma'am; no excuse at all, ma'am, for 'em."

"So, alas!" said Mrs. Glenn, "I find the world too--too much inclined to
reason; but I shall trust to the mercy and providence of the Lord, if
denied the kind feelings of mortals."

"Ah, yes, yes, that's it, ma'am; it's all very fine, ma'am; but too many
poor, foolish creatures get themselves in a scrape, then depend upon the
Lord to help 'em out. This shifting the responsibility to the shoulders
of the Lord isn't right. I don't wonder the Lord shuts his ears to half
he's asked to do, ma'am."

"Well, sir, I thought I would _call_, though I feared my children would
be an objection to--"

"Yes, yes,--I don't want incumbrances, ma'am."

"But I--I a--"--the widow's heart was too full for utterance; she moved
towards the door. "Good morning, sir."

"Stop, come back, ma'am, sit down; it's a pity--you've no business,
ma'am, as I said before, to have incumbrances, when you haven't got any
visible means of support. Now, if you only had one, one incumbrance--and
that you'd no business to have"--said the old gent, doggedly, tapping an
antique tortoise-shell snuff box, and applying "the pungent grains of
titillating dust," as Pope observes, to his proboscis, "if you had only
_one_ incumbrance--but you've got a house full, ma'am."

"No, sir, only three!" answered widow Glenn.

"Three, only three? God bless me, ma'am, I wouldn't be a poor woman with
two--no, with one incumbrance at my petticoat tails--for the biggest
ship and cargo old Steve Girard ever owned, ma'am."

"I might," meekly said the widow, "put my son with the printer, sir; he
has offered to take my poor boy."

"Two girls and a boy?" inquiringly asked the old gent, applying the
dust, and manipulating his box. "How old? Eldest thirteen, eh?--boy
eleven, and the youngest seven, eh?" and working a traverse, or solving
some problematic point, Job Carson stuck his hands under his morning
gown, and strode over the floor; after a few evolutions of the kind, he
stopped--fumbled in a drawer of a secretary, and placing a ten dollar
note in the widow's hand, he said:

"There, m