ma'am; and if you'll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one
will give him a character for steadiness; and he'll be glad enough
to come to-morrow night, I'll be bound."

Though Miss Matty was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.



CHAPTER V--OLD LETTERS



I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual
small economies--careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in
some one peculiar direction--any disturbance of which annoys him
more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance.
An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of
the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was
invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a
long summer's day because one of them had torn (instead of cutting)
out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book; of course, the
corresponding pages at the other end came out as well, and this
little unnecessary waste of paper (his private economy) chafed him
more than all the loss of his money. Envelopes fretted his soul
terribly when they first came in; the only way in which he could
reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by
patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so
making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see him
casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole
inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of