kitchen from above stairs.

"Throth," said the wife, who never replied with good humor unless when
addressed as Mrs. Burke, "you're ill off for something to speak about.
How are you, Peety? an' how is your little girl?"

"In good health, ma'am, thank God an' you; an' very well employed at the
present time, thanks to you still!"

To this Mrs. Burke made no reply; for it may be necessary to state
here, that although she was not actually penurious or altogether without
hospitality, and something that might occasionally be termed charity,
still it is due to honest Jemmy to inform the reader in the outset,
that, as Peety Dhu said, "the large heart and the lavish hand"
were especially his own. Mrs. Burke was considered to have been
handsome--indeed, a kind of rustic beauty in her day--and, like many of
that class, she had not been without a due share of vanity, or perhaps
we might say coquetry, if we were to speak the truth. Her teeth were
good, and she had a very pretty dimple in one of her cheeks when she
smiled, two circumstances which contributed strongly to sustain her good
humor, and an unaccountable tendency to laughter, when the poverty
of the jest was out of all proportion to the mirth that followed it.
Notwithstanding this apparently light and agreeable spirit, she was both
vulgar and arrogant, and labored under the weak and ridiculous ambition
of being considered a woman of high pretensions, who had been most
unfortunately thrown away, if not altogether lost, upon a husband whom
she considered as every way unworthy of her. Her father had risen into
the possession of some unexpected property when it was too late to
bestow upon her a suitable education, and the consequence was that, in
addition to natural vanity, on the score of beauty, she was a good