all, -- but you are a
sufficient excuse for me."

"Going to dinner? -- where?"

"No. 11, on the Parade."

"No. 11? -- Mr. Haye's? were you? I'll go too. I won't hinder
you."

"I am not sorry to be hindered," said Winthrop.

"But I am! -- at least, I should be. We'll both go. How soon,
Governor?"

"Presently."

"I'll be ready," said Rufus, -- "here's my valise -- but my
shirt ruffles, I fear, are in a state of impoverished
elegance. -- I speak not in respect of one or two holes, of
which they are the worse, -- but solely in reference to the
coercive power of narrow circumstances -- which nobody knows
anything of that hasn't experienced it," said Rufus, looking
up from his valise to his brother with an expression half
earnest, half comical.

"You are not suffering under it at this moment," said
Winthrop.

"Yes I am -- in the form of my frills. Look there! -- I'll tell
you what I'll do -- I'll invoke the charities of my good
friend, Mrs. Nettley. Is she down stairs? -- I'll be back in a
moment, Winthrop."

Down stairs, shirt in hand, went Rufus, and tapped at Mrs.
Nettley's door. That is, the door of the room where she
usually lived, a sort of better class kitchen, which held the
place of what in houses of more pretension is called the 'back
parlour.' Mrs. Nettley's own hand opened the door at his tap.

She was a strong contrast to her brother, with her rather
small person and a face all the lines of which were like a
cobweb set to catch every care that was flying; but woven by
no malevolent spider; it was a very nest of kindliness and
good-will.

"How d'ye do, Mrs. Nettley," said Rufus softly.

"Why, Mr. Landholm! -- are you there? Come in -- how good it is
to see you again! but I didn't expect it."

"Didn't expect to see me again?"

"No -- O yes, of course, Mr. William," said Mrs. Nettley
laughing, -- "I expected to see you again; but not now -- I
didn't expect to see you when I opened the door."

"I had the advantage, for I did expect to see you."

"How do you do, Mr. Landholm?"

"Why, as well as a man can do, in want of a shirt," said Rufus
comically.

"Mr. Landholm? --"

"You see, Mrs. Nettley," Rufus went on, "I have come all the
way from North Lyttleton to dine with a friend and my brother
here; and now I am come, I find that without your good offices
I haven't a ruffle to ruffle myself withal; or in other words,
I am afraid people would think I had packed myself bodily into
my val