When M. Antoine Perron entered, they started; at length, and then recollecting his mission, blushed crimson, looked one at another, and then at the ground, awaiting his address.

“Monsieur, and Madame,” said the notary, “according to your desires I come with all the documents necessary for your separation, and the division of your property.  They only want your signature, and we will call in your servant to be witness.”

“Stay,” exclaimed Madame Julie, laughing at her husband, “Pierre, explain to M. Perron.”

“Ah, Monsieur Perron,” said Monsieur Antoine Lavalles, “we had forgotten that, and hoped you had also.  Say not a word of it to any one.”

“No, not a word,” said Madame Julie.  “We never quarreled but once since we married, and we never mean to quarrel again.”

“Not unless you provoke it,” said Monsieur Lavalles, audaciously.  “But M. Perron, you will take breakfast with us?”

“You’re a wicked wretch,” said Madame Julie, tapping him on the cheek.  “After breakfast, M. Perron, we will sign the papers.”

“After breakfast,” said M. Pierre Lavalles, “we will burn them.”

“We shall see,” said the notary.  “Sign them or burn them.  Madame Julie Lavalles, your coffee is charming.”

* * * * *

After seven months’ harmony, do not let seven days’ quarrel destroy the happiness of home.  Do not follow the directions of a person in a passion.  Allow him to cool and consider his purpose.

* * * * *

[FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.]

DUST;

OR UGLINESS REDEEMED.

On a murky morning in November, wind north-east, a poor old woman with a wooden leg was seen struggling against the fitful gusts of the bitter breeze, along a stony zigzag road, full of deep and irregular cart-ruts.  Her ragged petticoat was blue, and so was her wretched nose.  A stick was in her left hand, which assisted her to dig and hobble her way along; and in her other hand, supported also beneath her withered arm, was a large rusty iron sieve.  Dust and fine ashes filled up all the wrinkles in her face; and of these there were a prodigious number, for she was eighty-three years old.  Her name was Peg Dotting.

About a quarter of a mile distant, having a long ditch and a broken-down fence as a foreground, there rose against the muddled-gray sky, a huge Dust-heap of a dirty black color, being, in fact, one of those immense mounds of cinders, ashes, and other emptyings from dust-holes and bins, which have conferred celebrity on certain suburban neighborhoods of a great city.  Toward this dusky mountain old Peg Dotting was now making her way.