ustere look.

"Now, didn't I tell you never to do it again?" she said, with an
uplifted finger and an air of stern reproof.

"Did you now?" said the parson, with an expression of bland
innocence--adding, in an accent of wonderment: "What a memory I have, to
be sure!"

"Leave such domestic duties to your domestic superiors," said the girl,
keeping a countenance of amazing severity. "Do you hear me, you dear old
darling?"

"I hear, I hear," said the old man, throwing his purchases on the floor
one by one. "Why, bless me, and here's Mr. Bonnithorne," he added,
lifting his eyes to the chimney-corner, where the lawyer sat toasting
his toes. "Welcome, welcome."

"Peter, Peter!" cried Greta, opening an inner door.

A gaunt old fellow, with only one arm, shambled into the room.

"Peter, take away these things to the kitchen," said Greta.

The old man glanced down at the parson's purchases with a look of
undisguised contempt.

"He's been at it again, mistress," he said.

The parson had thrown off his coat, and was pushing away his long boots
with the boot-jack.

"And how's Mr. Bonnithorne this rusty weather? Wait, Peter, give me the
slippers out of the big parcel. I got Randal Alston to cut down my old
boots into clock sides, and make me slippers out of the feet. Only
sixpence, and see what a cozy pair. Thank you, Peter. So you're well,
Mr. Bonnithorne. Odd, you say? Well, it is, considering the world of
folk who are badly these murky days."

Peter lifted the boots and fixed them dexterously under the stump of his
abridged member. The tea and coffee he deposited in his trousers'
pockets, and the sugar he carried in his hand.

"There'll be never no living with him," he muttered in Greta's ear as he
passed out. "Don't know as I mind his going to plow--that's a job for a
man with two hands--but the like o' this isn't no master's wark."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the parson, who was examining his easy-chair
preparatory to sitting in it, "a new cushion--and a bag on the wall for
my specs--and a shelf for my pipes--and a--a--what do you call this?"

"An antimacassar, Mr. Christian," the lawyer said.

"I wondered was he ever going to see any difference," said Greta, with
dancing eyes.

"Dear me, and red curtains on the windows, and a clean print counterpane
on the settle--"

"A chintz--a chintz," interposed Greta, with a mock whimper.

"And the old rosewood clock in the corner as bright as a looking-glass,
and the b