into comfortable and
uncomfortable. One fine day, Lady Mary Witherington, after paying all
the household bills, paid the debt of Nature; that is, she died: her
husband paid the undertaker's bill, so it is to be presumed that she was
buried.

Mr Witherington senior shortly afterwards had a stroke of apoplexy,
which knocked him down. Death, who has no feelings of honour, struck
him when down. And Mr Witherington, after having laid a few days in
bed, was by a second stroke laid in the same vault as Lady Mary
Witherington: and Mr Witherington junior (our Mr Witherington) after
deducting 40,000 pounds for his sister's fortune, found himself in
possession of a clear 8,000 pounds per annum, and an excellent house in
Finsbury Square. Mr Witherington considered this a comfortable income,
and he therefore retired altogether from business.

During the lifetime of his parents he had been witness to one or two
matrimonial scenes, which had induced him to put down matrimony as one
of the things not comfortable: therefore he remained a bachelor.

His sister Moggy also remained unmarried; but whether it was from a very
unprepossessing squint which deterred suitors, or from the same dislike
to matrimony as her brother had imbibed, it is not in our power to say.
Mr Witherington was three years younger than his sister; and although
he had for some time worn a wig, it was only because he considered it
more comfortable. Mr Witherington's whole character might be summed up
in two words--eccentricity and benevolence: eccentric he certainly was,
as most bachelors usually are. Man is but a rough pebble without the
attrition received from contact with the gentler sex: it is wonderful
how the ladies pumice a man down to a smoothness which occasions him to
roll over and over with the rest of his species, jostling but not
wounding his neighbours, as the waves of circumstances bring him into
collision with them.

Mr Witherington roused himself from his deep reverie, and felt for the
string connected with the bell-pull, which it was the butler's duty
invariably to attach to the arm of his master's chair previous to his
last exit from the dining-room; for, as Mr Witherington very truly
observed, it was very uncomfortable to be obliged to get up and ring the
bell: indeed, more than once Mr Witherington had calculated the
advantages and disadvantages of having a daughter about eight years old
who could ring bells, air the newspapers, and cut