to other people, is, I repeat, one worth knowing--and such there are,
though not many. Mrs. Raymount, half the head and more than half the
heart of a certain family in a certain lodging house in the forefront of
Burcliff, was one of such.

It was not a large family, yet contained perhaps as many varieties of
character and temper as some larger ones, with as many several ways of
fronting such a misfortune--for that is what poor creatures, the slaves
of the elements, count it--as rainy weather in a season concerning which
all men agree that it ought to be fine, and that something is out of
order, giving ground of complaint, if it be not fine. The father met it
with tolerably good humor; but he was so busy writing a paper for one of
the monthly reviews, that he would have kept the house had the day been
as fine as both the church going visitors, and the mammon-worshipping
residents with income depending on the reputation of their weather,
would have made it if they could, nor once said _by your leave_;
therefore he had no credit, and his temper must pass as not proven. But
if you had taken from the mother her piece of work--she was busy
embroidering a lady's pinafore in a design for which she had taken
colors and arrangement from a peacock's feather, but was disposing them
in the form of a sun which with its rays covered the stomacher, the
deeper tints making the shadow between the golden arrows--had you taken
from her this piece of work, I say, and given her nothing to do instead,
she would yet have looked and been as peaceful as she now looked, for
she was not like Doctor Doddridge's dog that did not know who made him.

A longish lad stood in the bow window, leaning his head on the shutter,
in a mood of smouldering rebellion against the order of things. He was
such a mere creature of moods, that individual judgments of his
character might well have proved irreconcilable. He had not yet begun by