every one in the house took a fancy to her. She won the hearts of the ladies by her unbounded fondness for their children, and her consummate tact in inventing new games for them; while her entire unconsciousness of her own attractions, and apparent indifference to admiration, silenced for a time all incipient jealousy. The gentlemen could not but be pleased with a pretty woman who was so sweet-tempered and so little exacting; while her peculiar talent for putting every one in good humour with themselves,—a talent, which in less skilful hands would have been merely an adroit power of flattery,—sufficiently accounted for her general influence.
There was only one person who seemed proof against Mrs. Howard’s spell. This was an old bank clerk, who for forty years had occupied the same post, and stood at the same desk, encountering no other changes than that of a new ledger for an old one, and hating every innovation in morals and manners with an intensity singularly at variance with his usual quietude, or rather stagnation of feeling. For nearly half his life he had occupied the same apartment, and nothing but a fire or an earthquake would have been sufficient to dislodge him. Many of the transient residents in the house knew him only by the sobriquet of “the Captain;” and the half-dictatorial, half-whimsical manner in which, with the usual privilege of a humourist, he ordered trifling matters about the house, was probably the origin of the title. When the ladies who presided at the head of the establishment first opened their house for the reception of boarders, he had taken up his quarters there, and they had all grown old together; so it was not to be wondered at if he had somewhat the manner of a master.
The Captain had looked with an evil eye upon Mrs. Howard from the morning after her arrival, when he had detected her French dressing-maid in the act of peeping into his boots, as they stood outside of the chamber-door. This instance of curiosity, which he could only attribute to an unjustifiable anxiety to be acquainted with the name of the owner of the said boots, was such a flagrant impropriety, besides being such a gross violation of his privilege of privacy, that he could not forgive it. He made a formal complaint of the matter to Mrs. Howard, and earnestly advised her to dismiss
