‘Nothing, thank you,’ said Stockdale, thinking less of what he replied than of what might be her relation to the household.

‘You are quite sure?’ said the young woman, apparently aware that he had not considered his answer.

He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there.  ‘Quite sure, Miss Newberry,’ he said.

‘It is Mrs. Newberry,’ she said.  ’Lizzy Newberry, I used to be Lizzy Simpkins.’

‘O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.’  And before he had occasion to say more she left the room.

Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the table.  ‘Whose house is this, my little woman,’ said he.

‘Mrs. Lizzy Newberry’s, sir.’

‘Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?’

’No.  That’s Mrs. Newberry’s mother.  It was Mrs. Newberry who comed in to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.’

Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she came again.  ‘I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,’ she said.  The minister stood up in acknowledgment of the honour.  ’I am afraid little Marther might not make you understand.  What will you have for supper?—­there’s cold rabbit, and there’s a ham uncut.’

Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was laid.  He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door again.  The minister had already learnt that this particular rhythm in taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive blandness.

’We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale—­I quite forgot to mention it just now.  Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring it up?’

Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech, perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister.  In three minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the hands of Martha Sarah.  Stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was intended that he should be.

He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs. Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.  Stockdale’s gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not appearing when expected.  It happened that the cold in the head from which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night, and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing which he could not anyhow repress.

Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity.  ’Your cold is very bad to-night, Mr. Stockdale.’

Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.

’And I’ve a good mind’—­she added archly, looking at the cheerless glass of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going to drink.