“I should feel very much obliged to you, sir, if you would kindly tell me what I had better do,” remarked the Young Person.

“Let things stop as they are,” I said, adapting my language to my listener.  “I invariably let things stop as they are.  Yes.  Is that all?”

“If you think it would be a liberty in me, sir, to write, of course I wouldn’t venture to do so.  But I am so very anxious to do all I can to serve my mistress faithfully——­”

People in the lower class of life never know when or how to go out of a room.  They invariably require to be helped out by their betters.  I thought it high time to help the Young Person out.  I did it with two judicious words—­

“Good-morning.”

Something outside or inside this singular girl suddenly creaked.  Louis, who was looking at her (which I was not), says she creaked when she curtseyed.  Curious.  Was it her shoes, her stays, or her bones?  Louis thinks it was her stays.  Most extraordinary!

As soon as I was left by myself I had a little nap—­I really wanted it.  When I awoke again I noticed dear Marian’s letter.  If I had had the least idea of what it contained I should certainly not have attempted to open it.  Being, unfortunately for myself, quite innocent of all suspicion, I read the letter.  It immediately upset me for the day.

I am, by nature, one of the most easy-tempered creatures that ever lived—­I make allowances for everybody, and I take offence at nothing.  But as I have before remarked, there are limits to my endurance.  I laid down Marian’s letter, and felt myself—­justly felt myself—­an injured man.

I am about to make a remark.  It is, of course, applicable to the very serious matter now under notice, or I should not allow it to appear in this place.

Nothing, in my opinion, sets the odious selfishness of mankind in such a repulsively vivid light as the treatment, in all classes of society, which the Single people receive at the hands of the Married people.  When you have once shown yourself too considerate and self-denying to add a family of your own to an already overcrowded population, you are vindictively marked out by your married friends, who have no similar consideration and no similar self-denial, as the recipient of half their conjugal troubles, and the born friend of all their children.  Husbands and wives talk of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and spinsters bear them.  Take my own case.  I considerately remain single, and my poor dear brother Philip inconsiderately marries.  What does he do when he dies?  He leaves his daughter to me.  She is a sweet girl—­she is also a dreadful responsibility.  Why lay her on my shoulders?  Because I am bound, in the harmless character of a single man, to relieve my married connections of all their own troubles.  I do my best with my brother’s responsibility—­I marry my niece, with infinite fuss and difficulty, to the man her father wanted her to marry.  She and her husband disagree, and unpleasant consequences follow.  What does she do with those consequences?  She transfers them to me.  Why transfer them to me?  Because I am bound, in the harmless character of a single man, to relieve my married connections of all their own troubles.  Poor single people!  Poor human nature!