gh occasionally affecting aristocratic airs, and giving late dinners
with enigmatic side-dishes and poisonous port, is never so comfortable as
when he is relaxing his professional legs in one of those excellent
farmhouses where the mice are sleek and the mistress sickly. And he is at
this moment in clover.

For the flickering of Mrs. Patten's bright fire is reflected in her
bright copper tea-kettle, the home-made muffins glisten with an inviting
succulence, and Mrs. Patten's niece, a single lady of fifty, who has
refused the most ineligible offers out of devotion to her aged aunt, is
pouring the rich cream into the fragrant tea with a discreet liberality.

Reader! _did_ you ever taste such a cup of tea as Miss Gibbs is this
moment handing to Mr. Pilgrim? Do you know the dulcet strength, the
animating blandness of tea sufficiently blended with real farmhouse
cream? No--most likely you are a miserable town-bred reader, who think of
cream as a thinnish white fluid, delivered in infinitesimal pennyworths
down area steps; or perhaps, from a presentiment of calves' brains, you
refrain from any lacteal addition, and rasp your tongue with unmitigated
bohea. You have a vague idea of a milch cow as probably a white-plaster
animal standing in a butterman's window, and you know nothing of the
sweet history of genuine cream, such as Miss Gibbs's: how it was this
morning in the udders of the large sleek beasts, as they stood lowing a
patient entreaty under the milking-shed; how it fell with a pleasant
rhythm into Betty's pail, sending a delicious incense into the cool air;
how it was carried into that temple of moist cleanliness, the dairy,
where it quietly separated itself from the meaner elements of milk, and
lay in mellowed whiteness, ready for the skimming-dish which transferred
it to Miss Gibbs's glass cream-jug. If I am right in my conjecture, you
are unacquainted with the highest possibilities of tea; and Mr. Pilgrim,
who is holding that cup in his hands, has an idea beyond you.

Mrs. Hackit declines cream; she has so long abstained from it with an eye
to the weekly butter-money, that abstinence, wedded to habit, has
begotten aversion. She is a thin woman with a chronic liver-complaint,
which would have secured her Mr. Pilgrim's entire regard and unreserved
good word, even if he had not been in awe of her tongue, which was as
sharp as his own lancet. She has brought her knitting--no frivolous fancy
knitting, but a substantial