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20 'Oh, I dare say. But you're mistook if you mean Smiley. It was 'sepilus as took him off, as everybody knows.'

'Well, my dear, I'm sure I'm not going to say anything against that. And now, John, do help her off with her bonnet and shawl, while I get the tea-things.'

Mrs. Smiley was a firm set, healthy-looking woman of—about forty. She had large, dark, glassy eyes, which were bright without sparkling. Her cheeks were very red, having a fixed settled colour that never altered with circumstances. Her black wiry hair was ended in short crisp curls, which sat close to her head. It almost collected like a wig, but the hair was in truth her own. Her mouth was small, and her lips thin, and they gave to her face a look of sharpness that was not quite agreeable. Nevertheless she was not a bad-looking woman, and with such advantages as two hundred a year and the wardrobe which Mrs. Moulder had described, was no doubt entitled to look for a second husband.

'Well, Mr. Kenneby, and how do you find yourself this cold weather? Dear, how he do snore; don't he?'

'Yes,' said Kenneby, very thoughtfully, 'he does rather.' He was thinking of Miriam Usbech as she was twenty years ago, and of Mrs. Smiley as she appeared at present. Not that he felt inclined to grumble at the lot prepared for him, but that he would like to take a few more years to think about it.

And then they sat down to tea. The lovely chops which Moulder had despised, and the ham in beautiful cut which had failed to tempt him, now met with due appreciation. Mrs. Smiley, though she had never been known to take a drop too much, did like to have things comfortable; and on this occasion she made an excellent meal, with a large pocket-handkerchief of Moulder's—brought in for the occasion—stretched across the broad expanse of the Irish tabinet. 'We sha'n't wake him, shall we?' said she, as she took her last bit of muffin.

'Not till he wakes natural, of hisself,' said Mrs. Moulder. 'When he's worked it off, he'll rouse himself, and I shall have to get him to bed.'

'He'll be a bit patchy then, won't he?'

'Well, just for a while of course he will,' said Mrs. Moulder. 'But there's worse than him. To-morrow morning, maybe, he'll be just as sweet as sweet. It don't hang about him, sullen like. That'That's [sic] what I hate, when it hangs about 'em.' Then the tea-things were taken away, Mrs. Smiley in her familiarity assisting in the removal, and—in spite of the example now before them—some more sugar and some more spirits, and some more hot water were put upon the table. 'Well, I don't mind just the least taste in life, Mrs. Moulder, as we're quite between friends; and I'm sure you'll want it to-night to keep yourself up.' Mrs. Moulder would have answered these last