“Dear, Mr. Winthrop, —­ what makes all this smoke here?” exclaimed Mrs. Nettley one morning, as she opened the door of his attic.

“I suppose, the wind, Mrs. Nettley,” said Winthrop looking up from the book he was studying.

“O dear! —­ how do you manage?”

“I can’t manage the smoke, Mrs. Nettley —­ Its resources exceed mine.”

“It’s that chimney!” exclaimed the good lady, standing and eyeing it in a sort of desperate concern, as if she would willingly have gone up the flue herself, so that only she could thereby have secured the smoke’s doing the same.  “I always knew that chimney was bad —­ I had it once a while myself —­ I’m sorry you’ve got it now.  What do you do, Mr. Winthrop?”

“The smoke and I take turns in going out, Mrs. Nettley.”

“Eh? —­ Does it often come in so?  Can’t you help it?”

“It generally takes advice with the wind, not with me, ma’am.”

“But the chimney might have better advice.  I’ll get George to fetch a doctor —­ I had forgotten it was so bad, I had quite forgotten it, and you never say a word —­ Mr. Landholm, you never come to see us.”

“I have so much else to see,” he said, glancing at his book.

“Yes, and that reminds me —­ Have you heard the news?”

“I have heard none to-day.”

“Then you heard it yesterday, —­ of course you did; but I hear so little, when anything comes to me that’s new I always think it must be new to everybody else.  But of course you must know it, as it is about friends of yours; I dare say you knew it long ago; —­ though such things are kept close sometimes, even from friends; and I somehow was surprised to hear this, though I had no right to be, for I suppose I had no reason for my fancy.  I think a good many things I have no reason for, George thinks.  Maybe I do.  I cant help it.”

“But what is the thing in this case, Mrs. Nettley?” said Winthrop smiling.

“Why George told me —­ don’t you know?  I was a little disappointed, Mr. Winthrop.”

“Why?”

“Why, I had a fancy things were going another way.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“That’s because I talk so ill —­ It’s this piece of news George brought home yesterday —­ he was dining out, for a wonder, with this gentleman who is going to sit to him; I forget his name, —­ Mr. —­ I don’t know what it is! —­ but I am foolish to talk about it.  Won’t you come down and take a cup of tea with us to-night, Mr. Landholm? that’s what I came up to ask, and not to stand interrupting you.  But you’ve quite forgotten us lately.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Nettley, I’ll come with great pleasure —­ on condition that you tell me your news.”

“The news?  O it’s no news to you —­ it’s only this about Miss Haye.”

“What about Miss Haye?”

“They say that she is going to get married, to a Mr. Cadwallader, George said.  Her cousin I suppose; there is a cousinship of that name, isn’t there, Mr. Landholm?”