Zack was really a good mimic; and he now hit off all the peculiarities
of Mrs. Peckover's voice, manner, and gait to the life--Mat chuckling
all the while, rolling his huge head from side to side, and striking his
heavy fist applaudingly on the table. Encouraged by the extraordinary
effect his performances produced, Zack went through the whole of
his scene with Mrs. Peckover in the passage, from beginning to end;
following that excellent woman through all the various mazes of
"rhodomontade" in which she then bewildered herself, and imitating her
terror when he threatened to run upstairs and ask Mr. Blyth if Madonna
really had a hair bracelet, with such amazing accuracy and humor, as
made Mat declare that what he had just beheld for nothing, would cure
him of ever paying money again to see any regular play-acting as long as
he lived.

By the time young Thorpe had reached the climax of his improvised
dramatic entertainment, he had so thoroughly exhausted himself that he
was glad to throw aside the pillows and the counterpane, and perfectly
ready to spend the rest of the evening quietly over the newspaper. His
friend did not interrupt him by a word, except at the moment when he sat
down; and then Mat said, simply and carelessly enough, that he
thought he should detect the original Mrs. Peckover directly by Zack's
imitation, if ever he met with her in the streets. To which Young Thorpe
merely replied that he was not very likely to do anything of the sort;
because Mrs. Peckover lived at Rubbleford, where her husband had some
situation, and where she herself kept a little dairy and muffin shop.
"She don't come to town above once a-year," concluded Zack as he lit a
cigar; "and then the old beauty stops in-doors all the time at Blyth's!"

Mat listened to this answer attentively, but offered no further remark.
He went into the back room, where the water was, and busied himself in
washing up all the spare crockery of the bachelor household in honor of
Mr. Blyth's expected visit.

In process of time, Zack--on whom literature of any kind, high or low,
always acted more or less as a narcotic--grew drowsy over his newspaper,
let his grog get cold, dropped his cigar out of his mouth, and fell fast
asleep in his chair. When he woke up, shivering, his watch had stopped,
the candle was burning down in the socket, the fire was out, and his
fellow-lodger was not to be seen either in the front or the back room.
Young Thorpe knew his f