And if I did not require to entertain Mrs.McRankine also, that was but another drop of bitterness in my cup! For what ailed my landlady, that she should hold herself so severely aloof, that she should refuse conversation, that her eyes should be reddened, that I should so continually hear the voice of her private supplications sounding through the house?
I was much deceived, or she had read the insidious paragraph and recognised the comminated pearl-grey suit.

I remember now a certain air with which she had laid the paper on my table, and a certain sniff, between sympathy and defiance, with which she had announced it: 'There's your _Mercury_ for ye!' In this direction, at least, I saw no pressing danger; her tragic countenance betokened agitation; it was plain she was wrestling with her conscience, and the battle still hung dubious.

The question of what to do troubled me extremely.

I could not venture to touch such an intricate and mysterious piece of machinery as my landlady's spiritual nature: it might go off at a word, and in any direction, like a badly-made firework.
And while I praised myself extremely for my wisdom in the past, that I had made so much a friend of her, I was all abroad as to my conduct in the present.

There seemed an equal danger in pressing and in neglecting the accustomed marks of familiarity.