Seriously offended at the discovery that he could not drop asleep in his own room, for a minute, without the music stopping and the accordion trying to slip off, the Ritualistic organist was not at all softened in temper by almost simultaneously realizing that the farther skirt of his long linen coat was standing out nearly straight from his person, and, apparently, fluttering in a heavy draught.

“Who’s-been-ope’nin’-th’-window?” he sternly asked,
“What’s-meaning-’f-such-a-gale-at thistime-’f-year?”

“Do I intrude?” inquired a voice close at hand.

Looking very carefully along the still extended skirt of his coat towards exactly the point of the compass from which the voice seemed to come, Mr. Bumstead at last awoke to the conviction that the tension of his garment and its breezy agitation were caused by the tugging of a human figure.

“Do I intrude?” repeated Mr. Tracey CLEWS, dropping the skirt as he spoke.  “Have I presumed too greatly in coming to request the favor of a short private interview?”

Slipping quickly into a more genteel but rather rigid position on his chair, the Ritualistic organist made an airy pass at him with the accordion.

“Any doors where youwasborn, sir?”

“There were, Mr. Bumstead.”

“People ever knock when th’ wanted t’-come-in, sir?”

“Why, I did knock at your door,” answered Mr. CLEWS, conciliatingly.  “I knocked and knocked, but you kept on playing; and after I finally took the liberty to come in and pull you by the coat, it was ten minutes before you found it out.”

In an attempt to look into the speaker’s inmost soul, Mr. Bumstead fell into a doze, from which the crash of his accordion to the floor aroused him in time to behold a very curious proceeding on the part of Mr. CLEWS.  That gentleman successively peered up the chimney, through the windows, and under the furniture of the room, and then stealthily took a seat near his rather languid observer.

“Mr. Bumstead, you know me as a temporary boarder under the same roof with you.  Other people know me merely as a dead-beat.  May I trust you with a secret?”

A pair of blurred and glassy eyes looked into his from under a huge straw hat, and a husky question followed his: 

“Did y’ ever read WORDSWORTH’S poem-’f-th’ Excursion, sir?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Then, sir,” exclaimed the organist, with spasmodic animation—­“then’s not in your hicsperience to know howssleepy-I am-jus’-now.”

“You had a nephew,” said his subtle companion, raising his voice, and not appearing to heed the last remark.

“An’ ’numbrella,” added Mr. Bumstead, feebly.

“I say you had a nephew,” reiterated the other, “and that nephew disappeared in a very mysterious manner.  Now I’m a literary man—­”

“C’d tell that by y’r-headerhair,” murmured the Ritualistic organist.  Left y’r wife yet, sir?”