that subject or any other during the rest of the dreary walk home,
through rain, fog, and mud, to Baregrove Square.

Rooms have their mysterious peculiarities of physiognomy as well as men.
There are plenty of rooms, all of much the same size, all furnished
in much the same manner, which, nevertheless, differ completely
in expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the other;
reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such fine
varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to all,
as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and
mouths, too intricately minute to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr.
Thorpe's house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished.
It was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table,
looking-glass, scroll fender, marble chimney-piece with a clock on it,
carpet with a drugget over it, and wire window-blinds to keep people
from looking in, characteristic of all respectable London parlors of the
middle class. And yet it was an inveterately severe-looking room--a room
that seemed as if it had never been convivial, never uproarious,
never anything but sternly comfortable and serenely dull--a room which
appeared to be as unconscious of acts of mercy, and easy unreasoning
over-affectionate forgiveness to offenders of any kind--juvenile or
otherwise--as if it had been a cell in Newgate, or a private torturing
chamber in the Inquisition. Perhaps Mr. Goodworth felt thus affected
by the parlor (especially in November weather) as soon as he entered
it--for, although he had promised to beg Zack off, although Mr. Thorpe
was sitting alone by the table and accessible to petitions, with a book
in his hand, the old gentleman hesitated uneasily for a minute or two,
and suffered his daughter to speak first.

"Where is Zack?" asked Mrs. Thorpe, glancing quickly and nervously all
round her.

"He is locked up in my dressing-room," answered her husband without
taking his eyes off the book.

"In your dressing-room!" echoed Mrs. Thorpe, looking as startled and
horrified as if she had received a blow instead of an answer; "in your
dressing-room! Good heavens, Zachary! how do you know the child hasn't
got at your razors?"

"They are locked up," rejoined Mr. Thorpe, with the mildest reproof in
his voice, and the mournfullest self-possession in his manner. "I took
care before I left the boy, that he should get at nothing which could d