tiously worked, and abstractedly
wishing themselves dead.[1]

The exhilarating effect of the genial Comic Paper man upon FLORA did
not, indeed, pass away, until she and Miss CAROWTHERS were in their
appointed quarters under the roof of Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, whither they went
immediately upon the arrival of the elder spinster from Bumsteadville.

"It could have been wished, my good woman," said Miss CAROWTHERS,
casting a rather disparaging look around the death-chamber of the late
Mr. SKAMMERHORN, "that you had assigned to educated single young ladies,
like ourselves, an apartment less suggestive of Man in his wedded
aspects. The spectacle of a pair of pegged boots sticking out from under
a bed, and a razor and a hone grouped on the mantle-shelf, is not such
as I should desire to encourage in the dormitory of a pupil under my
tuition."

"That's much to be deplored, I'm sure, CAROWTHERS," returned Mrs.
SKAMMERHORN, severely, "and sorry am I that I ever married, on that
particular account. I'd not have done it, if you'd only told me. But,
seeing that I married SKAMMERHORN, and then he died delirious, his
boots and razor must remain, just as he often wished to throw the
former at me in his ravings. Once married is enough, say I; and those
who never were, through having no proposals, must bear with those who
have, and take things as they come."

"There are those, I'd have you know, Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, to whom proposals
have been no inducement," said Miss CAROWTHERS, sharply; "or, if being
made, and then withdrawn, have given our sex opportunities to prove, in
courts of law, that damages can still be got. I'm afraid of no Man, my
good woman, as a person named BLODGETT once learned from a jury; but
boots and razors are not what I would have familiar to the mind of one
who never had a husband to die in raging torments, nor yet has sued for
breach."

"Miss POTTS is but a chicken, I'll admit," retorted Mrs. SKAMMERHORN;
"but you're not such, CAROWTHERS, by many a good year. On the contrary,
quite a hen. Then, you being with her, if the boots and razor make her
think she sees that poor, weak SKAMMERHORN a-ranging round the room,
when in his grave it is his place to be, you've only got to say: 'A fool
you are, and always were,'--as often I, myself, called at him in his
lifetime,--and off he'll go into his tomb again for fear of
broomsticks."

"FLORA, my dear," said Miss CAROWTHERS, turning with dignity to her
pupil, "if I know an