While I was thus interested and puzzled I received an unexpected visit from our Landlady.  She was evidently excited, and by some event which was of a happy nature, for her countenance was beaming and she seemed impatient to communicate what she had to tell.  Impatient or not, she must wait a moment, while I say a word about her.  Our Landlady is as good a creature as ever lived.  She is a little negligent of grammar at times, and will get a wrong word now and then; she is garrulous, circumstantial, associates facts by their accidental cohesion rather than by their vital affinities, is given to choking and tears on slight occasions, but she has a warm heart, and feels to her boarders as if they were her blood-relations.  She began her conversation abruptly.—­I expect I’m a going to lose one of my boarders,—­she said.

—­You don’t seem very unhappy about it, madam,—­I answered.—–­We all took it easily when the person who sat on our side of the table quitted us in such a hurry, but I do not think there is anybody left that either you or the boarders want to get rid of—­unless it is myself,—­I added modestly.

—­You! said the Landlady—­you!  No indeed.  When I have a quiet boarder that ’s a small eater, I don’t want to lose him.  You don’t make trouble, you don’t find fault with your vit—­[Dr. Benjamin had schooled his parent on this point and she altered the word] with your food, and you know when you ’ve had enough.

—­I really felt proud of this eulogy, which embraces the most desirable excellences of a human being in the capacity of boarder.

The Landlady began again.—­I’m going to lose—­at least, I suppose I shall—­one of the best boarders I ever had,—­that Lady that’s been with me so long.

—­I thought there was something going on between her and the Register,—­I said.

—­Something!  I should think there was!  About three months ago he began making her acquaintance.  I thought there was something particular.  I did n’t quite like to watch ’em very close; but I could n’t help overbearing some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to follow her up into the parlor, they talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now and then.  I heard him say something to her one day about “bettering her condition,” and she seemed to be thinking very hard about it, and turning of it over in her mind, and I said to myself, She does n’t want to take up with him, but she feels dreadful poor, and perhaps he has been saving and has got money in the bank, and she does n’t want to throw away a chance of bettering herself without thinking it over.  But dear me,—­says I to myself,—­to think of her walking up the broad aisle into meeting alongside of such a homely, rusty-looking creatur’ as that!  But there ’s no telling what folks will do when poverty has got hold of ’em.

—­Well, so I thought she was waiting to make up her mind, and he was hanging on in hopes she’d come round at last, as women do half the time, for they don’t know their own minds and the wind blows both ways at once with ’em as the smoke blows out of the tall chimlies,—­east out of this one and west out of that,—­so it’s no use looking at ’em to know what the weather is.