companion; "but our professions are to blame for that. So far as I myself am concerned, I may add that I was perfectly aware from the first that you came over in the steerage for I had seen the list of passengers and knew it did not comprise your name."
"I feel more obliged to you than before," said Martin.
"Norris is a very good fellow in his way," observed Mr. Bevan.
"Is he?" said Martin drily.
"Oh yes! there are a hundred good points about him. If you or anybody else addressed him as another order of being, and sued to him in formâ pauperis, he would be all kindness and consideration."
"I needn't have travelled three thousand miles from home to find such a character as that," said Martin. Neither he nor his friend said anything more on the way back; each appearing to find sufficient occupation in his own thoughts.
The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening meal, was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth, ornamented with a few additional smears and stains, was still upon the table. At one end of the board Mrs. Jefferson Brick and two other ladies were drinking tea—out of the ordinary course, evidently, for they were bonneted and shawled, and seemed to have just come home. By the light of three flaring candles of different lengths, in as many candlesticks of different patterns, the room showed to almost as little advantage as in broad day.
These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone when Martin and his friend entered; but, seeing those gentlemen, they stopped directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty. As they went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very water in the tea-pot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature beneath their chilling coldness.
"Have you been to meeting, Mrs. Brick?" asked Martin's friend, with something of a roguish twinkle in his eye.
"To lecture, sir."
"I beg your pardon. I forgot. You don't go to meeting, I think?"
Here the lady on the right of Mrs. Brick gave a pious cough, as much as to say "I do!"—as, indeed, she did, nearly every night in the week.
"A good discourse, ma'am?" asked Mr. Bevan, addressing this lady.
The lady raised her eyes in a pious manner, and answered "Yes." She had been much comforted by some good, strong, peppery doctrine, which satisfactorily disposed of all her friends and acquaintances, and quite settled their business. Her bonnet, too, had far outshone every bonnet in the congregation: so she was tranquil on all accounts.
"What course of lectures are you attending now, ma'am?" said Martin's friend, turning again to Mrs. Brick.
"The Philosophy of the Soul—on Wednesdays."
"On Mondays?"
"The Philosophy of Crime."
"On Fridays?"
"The Philosophy of Vegetables."
"You have forgotten Thursdays—the Philosophy of Government, my dear," observed the third lady.
