able
impression; and he felt a trifle wearied of this very dubious
enterprise. What likelihood was there, if his aunt had lived here a long
time past, as he assumed in his calculations, that she would have failed
to make herself known in some way to Doctor Chocker? since the vision
which he had of this worthy lady was that of a kind-hearted and most
neighborly soul. But he reflected that city life must differ greatly
from that in the country, even more than he had conceded with all his _a
priori_ reasonings; and he decided to draw no hasty inferences, but to
proceed in the Baconian method by calling at Number Three. He was rather
out of conceit with his strategy of thirst, which had so fallen below
the actual modes of effecting an entrance, and now resolved to march
boldly up with the irresistible engine of straight-forward inquiry,--as
straight-forward, at least, as the circumstances would permit. He
knocked at the door. After a little delay, enlivened for him by the
interchange of voices within the house, apparently at opposite
extremities, a light approached, and the door was opened, disclosing a
large and florid-faced man, in his shirt-sleeves, holding a small and
sleepy lamp in his hand. Nicholas moved at once upon the enemy's works.

"Will you have the goodness to tell me, Sir, if a lady named Miss Eunice
Brown lives here?"--that being his aunt's maiden name, and possibly good
on demand thirty years after date. The reply came, after a moment's
deliberation, as if the man wished to gain time for an excursion into
some unexplored region of the house,--

"Well, Sir, I won't say positively that she doesn't; and yet I can say,
that, in one sense of the word, Miss Eunice Brown does not live here.
Will you walk in, and we will talk further about it."

Nicholas entered, though somewhat wondering how they were to settle Miss
Brown's residence there by the most protracted conversation. The man in
shirt-sleeves showed him into a sitting-room, and setting the lamp upon
the top of a corner what-not, where it twinkled like a distant star, he
gave Nicholas a seat, and took one opposite to him, first shutting the
door behind them.

"Will you give me your name, Sir?" said he.

Nicholas hesitated, not quite liking to part with it to one who might
misuse it.

"I have no objection," said his companion, in a sonorous voice, "to
giving my name to any one that asks it. My name is Soprian Manlius."

"And mine," said Nicholas, not