"You are right, Mr. Ledgerfield. Pray be seated, sir."
"Thank you, madam, but let me first help you to a seat. Excuse the correction, but Egerton is my name."
"Ah, yes! For the sake of my friend, Mrs. Waters, I welcome you to Lansdale. Do you expect to make some stay in our town?"
"Well, madam, I hardly had such expectation before arriving here, but I find it so pretty a place that I begin to think I can scarcely do better. My health has been somewhat impaired by very strict and close attention to business; and my physician has ordered entire relaxation for a time, and fresh country air. Can you recommend a boarding-place in town? Some quiet, private hotel where drinking and things of that kind would not be going on. I'm not used to it, and should find it very disgusting."
"I'm glad to hear such sentiments, young man; they do you honor. I daresay Mrs. Sixpence,--no, Mrs. Schilling,--just opposite here, would take you in. She told me some weeks ago that she would be glad to have one or two gentlemen boarders."
"Thank you, the location would suit me well; and you think she could give me comfortable accommodations?"
"I do; she has pleasant rooms and is a good cook."
"Yes, not very young, and has two children. But they are old enough not to be annoying to a boarder."
"A good manager, neat, industrious, honest, and obliging. Very suitable for a landlady, if you are not looking in the person of your hostess for an intellectual companion."
"Oh, not at all, Miss Stanhope, unless--unless you could find it in your benevolent heart to take me in yourself;" and his smile was very insinuating. "In that case I should have the luxury of intellectual companionship superadded to the other advantages of which you have spoken."
The old lady smiled, but shook her head quite decidedly. "I have lived so long in the perfect house that I should not know how to give it up. I have come to think men a care and a trouble that I cannot take upon me in my old age."
"Excuse me, my dear madam, for the unwarrantable liberty I took in asking it," he said in an apologetic tone, and with a slightly embarrassed air. "I beg ten thousand pardons."
"That is a great many," she answered with a smile, "but you may consider them all granted. I hope you left my friend Mrs. Waters well? I must answer her letter directly."