ke a purchase, and got into conversation with Mr. Button,
a middle-aged man of bright intelligence and more reading than could be
expected. The herbalist led his customer to an upper room, in which
were stored sundry curiosities, and happened casually to say that he
was desirous of finding a lodger for two superfluous chambers. Peak's
inquiries led to his seeing Mrs. Button, whom he found to be a
Frenchwoman of very pleasing appearance; she spoke fluent
French-English, anything but disagreeable to an ear constantly
tormented by the London vernacular. After short reflection he decided
to take and furnish the rooms. It proved a most fortunate step, for he
lived (after the outlay for furniture) at much less expense than
theretofore, and in comparative luxury. Cleanliness, neatness, good
taste by no means exhausted Mrs. Button's virtues; her cooking seemed
to the lodger of incredible perfection, and the infinite goodwill with
which he was tended made strange contrast with the base usage he had
commonly experienced.

In these ten years he had paid but four visits to Twybridge, each of
brief duration. Naturally there were changes among his kinsfolk:
Charlotte, after an engagement which prolonged itself to the fifth
twelvemonth, had become Mrs. Cusse, and her husband now had a draper's
shop of his own, with two children already born into the world of
draperdom. Oliver, twice fruitlessly affianced, had at length (when
six-and-twenty) wedded a young person whom his mother and his aunt both
regarded as a most undesirable connection, the daughter (aged
thirty-two) of a man who was drinking himself to death on such money as
he could earn by casual reporting for a Twybridge newspaper. Mrs. Peak
the elder now abode with her sister at the millinery shop, and saw
little of her two married children. With Oliver and Charlotte their
brother had no sympathy, and affected none; he never wrote to them, nor
they to him; but years had strengthened his regard for his mother, and
with her he had fairly regular correspondence. Gladly he would have
seen her more often, but the air of shopkeeping he was compelled to
breathe when he visited Twybridge nauseated and repelled him. He
recognised the suitability both of Oliver and Charlotte for the
positions to which life had consigned them--they suffered from no
profitless aspiration; but it seemed to him a just cause of quarrel
with fate that his kindred should thus have relapsed, instead of
bettering