e and heavy chin. A
creature half alive; an imperfectly developed animal in shapeless form
clad in a man's pilot jacket, and treading in a man's heavy laced boots,
with nothing but an old red-flannel petticoat, and a broken comb in
her frowzy flaxen hair, to tell us that she was a woman--such was the
inhospitable person who had received us in the darkness when we first
entered the house.

This wonderful valet, collecting her materials for dressing her
still more wonderful master's hair, gave him the looking-glass (a
hand-mirror), and addressed herself to her work.

She combed, she brushed, she oiled, she perfumed the flowing locks and
the long silky beard of Miserrimus Dexter with the strangest mixture of
dullness and dexterity that I ever saw. Done in brute silence, with
a lumpish look and a clumsy gait, the work was perfectly well done
nevertheless. The imp in the chair superintended the whole proceeding
critically by means of his hand-mirror. He was too deeply interested
in this occupation to speak until some of the concluding touches to his
beard brought the misnamed Ariel in front of him, and so turned her
full face toward the part of the room in which Mrs. Macallan and I were
standing. Then he addressed us, taking especial care, however, not to
turn his head our way while his toilet was still incomplete.

"Mamma Macallan," he said, "what is the Christian name of your son's
second wife?"

"Why do you want to know?" asked my mother-in-law.

"I want to know because I can't address her as 'Mrs. Eustace Macallan.'"

"Why not?"

"It recalls _the other_ Mrs. Eustace Macallan. If I am reminded of those
horrible days at Gleninch my fortitude will give way--I shall burst out
screaming again."

Hearing this, I hastened to interpose.

"My name is Valeria," I said.

"A Roman name," remarked Miserrimus Dexter. "I like it. My mind is cast
in the Roman mold. My bodily build would have been Roman if I had been
born with legs. I shall call you Mrs. Valeria, unless you disapprove of
it."

I hastened to say that I was far from disapproving of it.

"Very good," said Miserrimus Dexter "Mrs. Valeria, do you see the face
of this creature in front of me?"

He pointed with the hand-mirror to his cousin as unconcernedly as he
might have pointed to a dog. His cousin, on her side, took no more
notice than a dog would have taken of the contemptuous phrase by which
he had designated her. She went on combing and oiling his beard