  As executor to my cousin, an attorney who had resided for upwards of thirty years in old Fumival's Inn, it became my duty to look over a quantity of his papers, in order to elucidate some important transactions, to which he had alluded in his will. The mass of documents was too weighty to admit of a removal; and, for some time after his decease, a variety of circumstances prevented me from devoting a morning to their examination at his chambers. At length, the feast of St. Swithin arrived:—the morning was ushered in, as is usually the case, with low and gloomy clouds; and at noon, a heavy shower, of several hours' duration, began to fall. The rain compelled me to abandon the business which I had intended to have done that day, and nothing of interest pressed for my attention at home. I lost an hour in going, alternately, to every window of the house; and, at the expiration of that time, as no symptoms of a change were perceptible,—Furnival's Inn being not far distant,—I resolved on passing the remainder of the morning at my late lamented cousin's chambers. So little inclination, however, had I for my task, that I should scarcely have had courage enough to sally forth in the rain, had I not felt a strong presentiment of an approaching visit from two respectable, but very prosing old ladies,—the poppies of every party in which they appeared,—who invariably took advantage of very wet days, to visit such of their acquaintance as were frequently from home; because, as they said, with some truth, scarcely any one was then out but themselves. Under a laudable fear of the heavy influence which these respectable old gentlewomen would have on my spirits, during such a remarkably dull day, and knowing, from past experience, that when they came, they usually stayed to dine, I glode forth, “like sparkle out of brode,” without saying a word to any body; took a hearty lunch at a coffee-house; hurried towards Furnival's Inn; and, at five o'clock, was jocosely reported, to the two old ladies whose visit I had anticipated, as being, notwithstanding the wetness of the day, “absent without leave.”
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