But he looked quite easy and comfortable: handed out his Aunt
Johanna, commanded the luggage about, and paid the cabmen with such a
magnificent air, that they touched their bats to him, and winked at
one another as much as to say. "That's a real gentleman!"

In which statement the landlady evidently coincided, and courtesied
low when Miss Leaf introducing him as "my nephew," hoped that a room
could be found for him. Which at last there was, by his appropriating
Miss Leaf's, while she and Hilary took that at the top of the house.
But they agreed, Ascott must have a good airy room to study in.

"You know, my dear boy," said his Aunt Johanna to him--and at her
tender tone he looked a little downcast, as when he was a small
fellow and had been forgiven something -- "You know you will have to
work very hard."

"All right, aunt! I'm your man for that! This will be a jolly room;
and I can smoke up the chimney capitally!"

So they came down stairs quite cheerfully, and Ascott applied himself
with the best of appetites to what he called a "hungry" tea. True,
the ham, which Elizabeth had to fetch from an eating house some
streets off, cost two shillings a pound, and the eggs, which caused
her another war below over the relighting of a fire to boil them,
were dismissed by the young gentleman as "horrid stale." Still,
woman-like, when there is a man in the question, his aunts let him,
have his why. It seemed as if they had resolved to try their utmost
to make the new home to which he came, or rather was driven, a
pleasant home, and to bind him to it with cords of love, the only
cords worth any thing, though sometimes--Heaved knows why--even they