keep up the necessary composure.  Martha burst out of the room, and Miss Matty had to clear her voice once or twice before she could speak.  At last she said, “I should like to keep this pudding under a glass shade, my dear!” and the notion of the lion couchant, with his currant eyes, being hoisted up to the place of honour on a mantelpiece, tickled my hysterical fancy, and I began to laugh, which rather surprised Miss Matty.

“I am sure, dear, I have seen uglier things under a glass shade before now,” said she.

So had I, many a time and oft, and I accordingly composed my countenance (and now I could hardly keep from crying), and we both fell to upon the pudding, which was indeed excellent—­only every morsel seemed to choke us, our hearts were so full.

We had too much to think about to talk much that afternoon.  It passed over very tranquilly.  But when the tea-urn was brought in a new thought came into my head.  Why should not Miss Matty sell tea--be an agent to the East India Tea Company which then existed?  I could see no objections to this plan, while the advantages were many—­always supposing that Miss Matty could get over the degradation of condescending to anything like trade.  Tea was neither greasy nor sticky—­grease and stickiness being two of the qualities which Miss Matty could not endure.  No shop-window would be required.  A small, genteel notification of her being licensed to sell tea would, it is true, be necessary, but I hoped that it could be placed where no one would see it.  Neither was tea a heavy article, so as to tax Miss Matty’s fragile strength.  The only thing against my plan was the buying and selling involved.

While I was giving but absent answers to the questions Miss Matty was putting—­almost as absently—­we heard a clumping sound on the stairs, and a whispering outside the door, which indeed once opened and shut as if by some invisible agency.  After a little while Martha came in, dragging after her a great tall young man, all crimson with shyness, and finding his only relief in perpetually sleeking down his hair.

“Please, ma’am, he’s only Jem Hearn,” said Martha, by way of an introduction; and so out of breath was she that I imagine she had had some bodily struggle before she could overcome his reluctance to be presented on the courtly scene of Miss Matilda Jenkyns’s drawing-room.

“And please, ma’am, he wants to marry me off-hand.  And please, ma’am, we want to take a lodger—­just one quiet lodger, to make our two ends meet; and we’d take any house conformable; and, oh dear Miss Matty, if I may be so bold, would you have any objections to lodging with us?  Jem wants it as much as I do.” [To Jem ]—­“You great oaf! why can’t you back me!—­But he does want it all the same, very bad—­don’t you, Jem?—­only, you see, he’s dazed at being called on to speak before quality.”

“It’s not that,” broke in Jem.  “It’s that you’ve taken me all on a sudden, and I didn’t think for to get married so soon—­and such quick words does flabbergast a man.  It’s not that I’m against it, ma’am” (addressing Miss Matty), “only Martha has such quick ways with her when once she takes a thing into her head; and marriage, ma’am—­marriage nails a man, as one may say.  I dare say I shan’t mind it after it’s once over.”