ce-door opened, he shoots past his
clerk at the same pace, and diving into his own private room, closes the
door, examines the window-fastenings, and gradually unrobes himself:
hanging his pocket-handkerchief on the fender to air, and determining to
write to the newspapers about the fog, which, he says, 'has really got to
that pitch that it is quite unbearable.'

In this last opinion Mrs. Merrywinkle and her respected mother fully
concur; for though not present, their thoughts and tongues are occupied
with the same subject, which is their constant theme all day. If anybody
happens to call, Mrs. Merrywinkle opines that they must assuredly be mad,
and her first salutation is, 'Why, what in the name of goodness can bring
you out in such weather? You know you _must_ catch your death.' This
assurance is corroborated by Mrs. Chopper, who adds, in further
confirmation, a dismal legend concerning an individual of her
acquaintance who, making a call under precisely parallel circumstances,
and being then in the best health and spirits, expired in forty-eight
hours afterwards, of a complication of inflammatory disorders. The
visitor, rendered not altogether comfortable perhaps by this and other
precedents, inquires very affectionately after Mr. Merrywinkle, but by so
doing brings about no change of the subject; for Mr. Merrywinkle's name
is inseparably connected with his complaints, and his complaints are
inseparably connected with Mrs. Merrywinkle's; and when these are done
with, Mrs. Chopper, who has been biding her time, cuts in with the
chronic disorder--a subject upon which the amiable old lady never leaves
off speaking until she is left alone, and very often not then.

But Mr. Merrywinkle comes home to dinner. He is received by Mrs.
Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper, who, on his remarking that he thinks his
feet are damp, turn pale as ashes and drag him up-stairs, imploring him
to have them rubbed directly with a dry coarse towel. Rubbed they are,
one by Mrs. Merrywinkle and one by Mrs. Chopper, until the friction
causes Mr. Merrywinkle to make horrible faces, and look as if he had been
smelling very powerful onions; when they desist, and the patient,
provided for his better security with thick worsted stockings and list
slippers, is borne down-stairs to dinner. Now, the dinner is always a
good one, the appetites of the diners being delicate, and requiring a
little of what Mrs. Merrywinkle calls 'tittivation;' the secret o