This very morning they had had a conversation.
"Poor Miss Mabel! dear heart.

A twelvemonth married, and nigh six months of it a widow, or next door." "We write to her, James, and entertain her replies, which are at considerable length." "Ay, but we don't read 'em!" said James, with an uneasy glance at the tray.
"Invariably, at our leisure; meantime we make ourselves happy among the wits and the sirens." "And she do make others happy among the poor and the ailing." "Which shows," said Colander, superciliously, "the difference of tastes." Burdock, whose eye had never been off his mistress's handwriting, at last took it up and said: "Master Colander, do if ye please, sir, take this into master's dressing-room, do now ?" Colander looked down on the missive with dilating eye.

"Not a bill, James Burdock," said he, reproachfully.
"A bill! bless ye, no.

A letter from missus." No, the dog would not take it in to his master; and poor James, with a sigh, replaced it in the tray.
This James Burdock, then, was left in charge of the hall by Colander, and it so happened that the change was hardly effected before a hurried knocking came to the street door.
"Ay, ay!" grumbled Burdock, "I thought it would not be long.

London for knocking and ringing all day, and ringing and knocking all night." He opened the door reluctantly and suspiciously, and in darted a lady, whose features were concealed by a hood.