Mary Ann silently went to the mantel-piece, handed him the matches, and left the room without a word.

“I say, Lancelot, adversity doesn’t seem to have agreed with you,” said Peter, severely.  “That poor girl’s eyes were quite wet when she went out.  Why didn’t you speak?  I could have given you heaps of lights, and you might even have sacrificed another scrap of that precious manuscript.”

“Well, she has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same,” said Lancelot, somewhat shamefacedly.  “Besides, I hate her for being called Mary Ann.  It’s the last terror of cheap apartments.  If she only had another name like a human being, I’d gladly call her Miss something.  I went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly way, as if I’d asked her to marry me.  I suppose the fact is she’s been called Mary Ann so long and so often that she’s forgotten her father’s name—­if she ever had any.  I must do her the justice, though, to say she answers to the name of Mary Ann in every sense of the phrase.”

“She didn’t seem at all bad-looking, anyway,” said Peter.

“Every man to his taste!” growled Lancelot.  “She’s as platt and uninteresting as a wooden sabot.”

“There’s many a pretty foot in a sabot,” retorted Peter, with an air of philosophy.

“You think that’s clever, but it’s simply silly.  How does that fact affect this particular sabot?”

“I’ve put my foot in it,” groaned Peter, comically.

“Besides, she might be a houri from heaven,” said Lancelot; “but a houri in a patched print frock—­” He shuddered and struck a match.

“I don’t know exactly what houris from heaven are, but I have a kind of feeling any sort of frock would be out of harmony—!”

Lancelot lit his pipe.

“If you begin to say that sort of thing we must smoke,” he said, laughing between the puffs.  “I can offer you lots of tobacco—­I’m sorry I’ve got no cigars.  Wait till you see Mrs. Leadbatter—­my landlady—­then you’ll talk about houris.  Poverty may not be a crime, but it seems to make people awful bores.  Wonder if it’ll have that effect on me? Ach Himmel! how that woman bores me.  No, there’s no denying it—­there’s my pouch, old man—­I hate the poor; their virtues are only a shade more vulgar than their vices.  This Leadbatter creature is honest after her lights—­she sends me up the most ridiculous leavings—­and I only hate her the more for it.”

“I suppose she works Mary Ann’s fingers to the bone from the same mistaken sense of duty,” said Peter, acutely.  “Thanks; think I’ll try one of my cigars.  I filled my case, I fancy, before I came out.  Yes, here it is; won’t you try one?”

“No, thanks, I prefer my pipe.”

“It’s the same old meerschaum, I see,” said Peter.

“The same old meerschaum,” repeated Lancelot, with a little sigh.

Peter lit a cigar, and they sat and puffed in silence.