vening to her house; and just because it was
Christmas-eve, I was foolish enough to be wheedled by her into saying I
would go. Miss ---- Miss ----, I can't remember her name now. I shall
have to ask Maria. There, you haven't got much satisfaction out of me;
but do you mind what I said to you, and it will be worth more than if I
had told you what books to read. Eh?" And he invited Nicholas once more
to drop his words into the trumpet.

"Good afternoon," said Nicholas, hesitatingly,--"thank you,"--at a loss
what pertinent reply to make, and in despair of clearing himself from
the tangle in which he had become involved. It was plain, too, that he
should get no satisfaction here, at least upon the search in which he
was engaged. But the reply seemed quite satisfactory to the old
gentleman, who cheerfully relinquished him to black Maria, who, in turn,
passed him out of the house.

Left to himself, and rid of his personal embarrassment, he began to feel
uncomfortably guilty, as he considered the confusion which he had
entailed upon the real philological disciple, and would fain comfort
himself with the hope that he had acted as a sort of lightning-rod to
conduct the old scholar's bolts, and so had secured some immunity for
the one at whom the bolts were really shot. But his own situation
demanded his attention; and leaving the to-be unhappy young man and the
to-be perplexed old gentleman to settle the difficulty over the
mediating ear-trumpet, he addressed himself again to his task, and
proposed to take another survey of the court, with the vague hope that
his aunt might show herself with such unmistakable signs of relationship
as to bring his researches to an immediate and triumphant close.

Just as he was turning away from the front of Number One, buttoning his
overcoat with an air of self-abstraction, he was suddenly and
unaccountably attacked in the chest with such violence as almost to
throw him off his feet. At the next moment his ears were assailed by a
profusion of apologetic explanations from a young man, who made out to
tell him, that, coming out of his house with the intention of calling
next door, he had leaped over the snow that lay between, and, not seeing
the gentleman, had, most unintentionally, plunged headlong into him. He
hoped he had not hurt him; he begged a thousand pardons; it was very
careless in him; and then, perfect peace having succeeded this violent
attack, the new-comer politely asked,--

"Ca