“There are those, I’d have you know, Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, to whom proposals have been no inducement,” said Miss CAROWTHERS, sharply; “or, if being made, and then withdrawn, have given our sex opportunities to prove, in courts of law, that damages can still be got.  I’m afraid of no Man, my good woman, as a person named Blodgett once learned from a jury; but boots and razors are not what I would have familiar to the mind of one who never had a husband to die in raging torments, nor yet has sued for breach.”

“Miss Potts is but a chicken, I’ll admit,” retorted Mrs. SKAMMERHORN; “but you’re not such, CAROWTHERS, by many a good year.  On the contrary, quite a hen.  Then, you being with her, if the boots and razor make her think she sees that poor, weak SKAMMERHORN a-ranging round the room, when in his grave it is his place to be, you’ve only got to say:  ’A fool you are, and always were,’—­as often I, myself, called at him in his lifetime,—­and off he’ll go into his tomb again for fear of broomsticks.”

“Flora, my dear,” said Miss CAROWTHERS, turning with dignity to her pupil, “if I know anything of human nature, the man who has once got away from here, will stay away.  Only single ghosts have attachments for the houses in which they once lived.  So, never mind the boots and razor, darling; which, after all, if seen by peddlers, or men who come to fix the gas, might keep us safe from robbers.”

“As safe as any man himself, young woman, with pistols under his head that he would never dare to fire if robbers were no more than cats rampaging,” added Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, enthusiastically.  “With nothing but an old black hat of SKAMMERHORN’S, and walking-cane, kept hanging in the hall, I haven’t lost a spoon by tramps or census takers for six mortal years.  So, make yourselves at home, I beg you both, while I go down and cook the liver for our dinner.  You’ll find it tender as a chicken, after what you’ve broke your teeth upon in boarding-schools; though SKAMMERHORN declared it made him bilious in the second year, forgetting what he’d drank with sugar to his taste, beforehand.”

Thus was sweet Flora Potts introduced to her new home; where, but for looking down from her windows at the fashions, making-up hundreds of bows of ribbons for her neck, and making-over all her dresses, her woman’s mind must have been a blank.  What time Miss CAROWTHERS told her all day how she looked in this or that style of wearing her hair, and read her to sleep each night with extracts from the pages of cheery Hannah more.  As for the object nearest her young heart, to say that she was wholly unruffled by it would be inaccurate; but by address she kept it hidden from all eyes save her own.

[Footnote 1:  Ordinary readers, while admiring the heavy humor of this unexpected open-air episode, may wonder what on earth it has to do with the the Story; but the cultivated few, understanding the ingenious mechanics of novel-writing, will appreciate it as a most skilful and happy device to cover the interval between the hiring of Mrs. SKAMMERHORN’s room, and the occupation thereof by Flora and her late teacher—­another instance of what our profoundly critical American journals call “artistic—­elaboration.” (See corresponding Chapter of the original English Story.)]