to hang up his hat and coat and the
detested mittens, and slink upstairs to Julia and his note-books. The
drawing-room at least was sacred from Morris; it belonged to the old man
and the young girl; it was there that she made her dresses; it was there
that he inked his spectacles over the registration of disconnected facts
and the calculation of insignificant statistics.

Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine. "If it
were not for that," he cried one afternoon, "he would not care to keep
me. I might be a free man, Julia. And I could so easily support myself
by giving lectures."

"To be sure you could," said she; "and I think it one of the meanest
things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement. There were those
nice people at the Isle of Cats (wasn't it?) who wrote and asked you so
very kindly to give them an address. I did think he might have let you
go to the Isle of Cats."

"He is a man of no intelligence," cried Joseph. "He lives here literally
surrounded by the absorbing spectacle of life, and for all the good it
does him, he might just as well be in his coffin. Think of his
opportunities! The heart of any other young man would burn within him at
the chance. The amount of information that I have it in my power to
convey, if he would only listen, is a thing that beggars language,
Julia."

"Whatever you do, my dear, you mustn't excite yourself," said Julia;
"for you know, if you look at all ill, the doctor will be sent for."

"That is very true," returned the old man humbly, "I will compose myself
with a little study." He thumbed his gallery of note-books. "I wonder,"
he said, "I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether it
might not interest you----"

"Why, of course it would," cried Julia. "Read me one of your nice
stories, there's a dear!"

He had the volume down and his spectacles upon his nose instanter, as
though to forestall some possible retractation. "What I propose to read
to you," said he, skimming through the pages, "is the notes of a highly
important conversation with a Dutch courier of the name of David Abbas,
which is the Latin for abbot. Its results are well worth the money it
cost me, for, as Abbas at first appeared somewhat impatient, I was
induced to (what is, I believe, singularly called) stand him drink. It
runs only to about five-and-twenty pages. Yes, here it is." He cleared
his throat, and began to read.

Mr. Finsbury (according to his own repo