te of time. They lingered at table precisely eight minutes,
before setting out for school; though we, absorbed in conversation,
remained at least ten;--after which we instantly hastened to your
counting-room, where you, without a moment's delay, absorbed yourself in
your ledger, while I flirted languidly with the "Daily Advertiser."

You bent over your desk the whole morning, occasionally having
anxious consultations with certain sickly men whom I supposed to be
superannuated bookkeepers, in impoverished circumstances, and rather
pallid from the want of nutritious food. One of them, dressed in rusty
black, with a flabby white neckcloth, I took for an ex-clergyman; he was
absorbed in the last number of the "Independent," though I observed, at
length, that he was only studying the list of failures, a department to
which, as it struck me, he himself peculiarly appertained. All of these,
I afterwards ascertained from your office-boy, were eminent capitalists;
something had gone wrong in the market,--not in the meat-market, as I
should have supposed from their appearance, but in the money-market. I
believe that there was some sudden fall in the price of indigo. I know
you looked exceedingly blue as we walked home to dinner.

Dinner was ready the instant we opened the front door. I expected as
much; I knew the pale, speechless woman who sat at the head of your
table would make sure of punctuality, if she died for it. We took our
seats without a word. The party was smaller than at breakfast. Two of
the children had staid at school, having their luncheon-baskets well
filled from the cold remains of breakfast. Your eldest girl, Angelina,
aged ten, one of those premature little grown women who have learned
from the cradle that man is born to eat pastry and woman to make it,
postponed her small repast till an indefinite future, and sat meekly
ready to attend upon our wants. Nathaniel, a thin boy of eight,
also partook but slightly, having impaired his appetite, his mother
suspected, by a copious luncheon of cold baked beans and vinegar, on
his return from school. The two youngest (twins) had relapsed to their
couches soon after breakfast, in consequence of excess of sausage.

You were quite agreeable in conversation, I remember, after the first
onset of appetite was checked. You gave me your whole theory of the
indigo crisis, with minute details, statistical and geographical, of
the financial condition and supposed present locati