which strewed the floor.

"Susey said you told her she might have the castors and tea things, and
that I was to give them to her," said Mr. Pimble, without lifting his
eyes from the hearth he was contemplating.

"Very well, I did tell Susey she might have the articles mentioned to
amuse herself with, and it was fitting she should have them, or I had
not given my consent. But why do I find them dashed to the floor and
rendered useless? Answer me that, you slip-shod sloven?"

With an awful air, Mrs. Pimble folded her arms and looked down upon her
husband, who cringed away before her ireful presence, and said, "Susey
dropped the waiter."

"Dropped the waiter!" repeated Mrs. Pimble, her anger freshening to a
gale. "And could you not prevent her from dropping it? or had you no
more sense than to load an avalanche of china on the arms of a little
child?"

"She took the waiter from me," said Pimble, in a dogged tone, his eyes
still studying the tiles in the hearth.

Mrs. Pimble darted upon him one glance of the most withering contempt,
and taking Susey by the hand led her from the room, without deigning to
utter another word.

Soon as she disappeared Peggy set about clearing up the broken crockery,
and Mr. Pimble crawled off into the recess of a window where the sun
might shine on his shivering frame, and at length fell asleep. He had
hardly concluded his first dream of fragmentary tea-cups, ere a violent
pulling at his draggling coat-tails, which hung over the sill, caused
him to wake with a start, when he beheld Peggy Nonce at his side,
saying, "Dilly Danforth was come to see him." With a hopeless yawn he
crawled out of his sunny nook, and, turning his dull, sleepy eyes toward
the disturber of his quiet, demanded, in a surly tone, "what she wanted
with him."

"I have come to pay my quarter's rent," said Mrs. Danforth, placing a
bank note in his grimy hand. He closed his skinny fingers on it with an
eager clutch, and looked in the woman's face with a vague expression of
wonder.

"I am glad to get a shilling from you at last," said he, fondling the
note; "but this will not quite pay up the last quarter's rent. There's
about half a dollar more my due. You can come and do the spring
cleaning, and then I'll call matters square between us."

"I thought ten dollars was the sum specified, for three months' rent,"
remarked Mrs. Danforth.

"It was," returned he, "but you know you had the pig's feet and ears at
the fal