Mrs. Flin seemed to her new lodgers to be a quiet kind of body, keeping her own house without minding much about her neighbors. The truth of it was she held herself a good deal above them, for she was well to do in the world. Besides she visited in the next street at the large white house with green blinds, where they kept a hired girl, and to be sure she didn't care for the people that took one or two rooms of her, and lived in a small way, save for the money they paid her; she was pretty sure to make them all a call once a quarter at least, and woe betide them if the rent-money was not forthcoming! She didn't call herself a hard-hearted woman; but she must look out for her own rights since Mr. Flin was off at sea the greater part of the time, and there was nobody to take the responsibility from her.

One thing troubled her considerably, and that was that such a gentlemanly-looking man as Mr. Bond should lavish all his favors and visits upon her poor lodger's children. She thought he might as well stop sometimes on the first floor and notice her little Sammy; but he never did—although she often met him in the entry, and invited him to walk in and rest before going up the long flights of stairs—but went panting upward with his gold-headed cane in his hand, and the ruffles to his shirt rising and falling at every ascent.

Sammy was a sad little rascal, and would throw apple-skins on the entry floor, and lay round pebbles on the lowest stair, hoping to trip the old man up as he came in or went out, and Mr. Bond caught him at it, so that he was always careful afterward to keep an eye to his feet. But the boy stood in his own light, for there were no favors for him after that. Mr. Bond never patronized wicked children.

His mother would manage to stand in the door, whenever she saw the gentleman coming, with Sammy by her side, and she would ask him if he wasn't fond of children, and tell him what a good boy Sammy was at school, and how well he got on with his lessons; and then Sammy must speak his last piece to Mr. Bond. But it would not do; he stood it all very patiently, and when she had the grace to leave space enough for him to pass her, he would make his bow and walk gravely on, glad to reach the shelter of the pleasant attic. Mrs. Flin laid it up against him, though, and threw out many an innuendo concerning his frequent visits to the poor children, when gossiping with her friend of the white house, and so it reached his landlady, Mrs. Kinalden, who knew Mr. and Mrs. Airly very well.

"A strange how d'ye do it is," said she to Mr. Bond, one evening on his return from Nannie's, "that I must keep my doors open till half past nine o'clock, for you to be out on your untimely visits to a poor widder! It isn't any sich doings Susan Kinalden'll countenance, you'd better believe!"

Mr. Bond did not think her worth one moment's excitability, so he calmly told her she could find another occupant for his room if she was dissatisfied with his conduct, and he would seek a home elsewhere.

It was wonderful how changed she was when he went down to breakfast the next morning. There were hot eggs beside his plate, and a dish of warm toast, and the landlady was full of her compliments. "She didn't see how Mr. Bond managed to look so fresh and young! She was on the sunny side of fifty, and anybody would take him to be her brother!" and when he asked her what time he should remove his furniture, she wondered he had lived so long in the house with her and never yet found out her jesting propensities. She's sure she couldn't desire a nicer or more circumspect boarder than Mr. Bond! And so the matter passed over. She knew her own interest too well to venture on forbidden ground again. And he had got attached to the room, and did not care to leave it. The portrait had occupied that same space for more than ten years, and there was a sacred sort of feeling about the place that he could not find elsewhere. Puss liked her quarters too, and it was not worth while to seek a change so long as she didn't complain. Mr. Bond thought himself very foolish to have proposed such a thing, and he went from his breakfast and settled himself in his chair by his center-table, with a self-gratulation that he hadn't got to move after all. As for Mrs. Kinalden, she could scarcely forgive herself for incurring the risk of losing one of her best and most permanent boarders, and her night had been spent in bitter self-reproaches and regrets. The morning, however, compensated for the night of grief, when she felt that Mr. Bond—good soul!—overlooked it all, and was willing to stay. "It stands you in hand to mind your tongue, though, Susan Kinalden," soliloquized she, as she wiped the last dish and stood it up end-wise in her pantry. "It isn't the first time you've come nigh biting your own head off!"