er with such a crash, that poor Dilly, as she stood
over the stove trying to warm her chilly fingers by a decaying fire,
momentarily expected to see them scattered over the floor in a thousand
fragments.

"Sakes! are you cold this warm spring morning?" snarled the plump,
well-fed housekeeper, as she thumped back and forth, carrying her piles
of plates to the cupboard. "Why don't you shut the outside door after
you, then? For my part, I'm most roasted to death."

"You have been in a warm room, while I have not seen a fire this
morning," said Dilly, meekly, as she closed the door and returned to her
place by the stove.

"Well, I wish I hadn't," answered the ireful Mrs. Peggy Nonce;--"a hard
fate is mine; sweltering over a great fire all my life, to cook for a
family that don't know nothing only to make the work as hard as they can.
Now, here's Mr. Pimble goes and gets you here to wash; never tells me a
word about it till you come right in upon me just as I have got my
breakfast things cleared away, settin'-room swept out, and fire all down
in the kitchen. I s'pose you have had nothing to eat to-day, for you
always come half starved, though why you do so I don't know, save to make
me work and get all you can out of us. When Mr. Pimble rents you that
great house so cheap, too! I declare, I should think, with all that man's
trials, he would get to be a hypocrite and believe in total
annihilation."

Dilly made no reply to this speech. Probably the latter part was beyond
her simple comprehension.

Mr. Pimble himself, the man of trials, as his housekeeper affirmed, now
opened the sitting-room door and looked forth. He was habited in a long,
faded, palm-figured bed-gown, all muffled up round his chin, and
sheep-skin slippers without heels. He had a lank, pale, discouraged
visage, and thin, light hair, streaked with gray, in a very untidy state
straggling about his face. He pulled his wrapper up yet closer about his
head, when he discovered the washerwoman, and shambled across the
clean-swept floor, his heelless slippers going clip-clap after him, as he
stalked along. What a gaunt, unhealthy-looking personage was the rich
Peter Paul Pimble, Esq., of Mudget Square!

"Well, you are come, then, are you?" said he, glancing toward the kitchen
clock, which was on the stroke of eight; "pretty time to commence a day's
work."

"And she has had no breakfast; and the water is not in the kettles," put
in dame Peggy. "I could have ha