sermon forty minutes long by my watch? I was tired of it myself I know,
though I wasn't candid enough to show it as the boy did. There! there!
we won't begin to argue: I'll beg Zack off this time, and we'll say no
more about it."

Mr. Goodworth's announcement of his benevolent intentions towards Zack
seemed to have very little effect on Mrs. Thorpe; but she said nothing
on that subject or any other during the rest of the dreary walk home,
through rain, fog, and mud, to Baregrove Square.

Rooms have their mysterious peculiarities of physiognomy as well as
men. There are plenty of rooms, all of much the same size, all
furnished in much the same manner, which, nevertheless, differ
completely in expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the
other; reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such
fine varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to
all, as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and
mouths, too intricately minute to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr.
Thorpe's house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished. It
was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table,
looking-glass, scroll fender, marble chimney-piece with a clock on it,
carpet with a drugget over it, and wire window-blinds to keep people
from looking in, characteristic of all respectable London parlors of
the middle class. And yet it was an inveterately severe-looking room--a
room that seemed as if it had never been convivial, never uproarious,
never anything but sternly comfortable and serenely dull--a room which
appeared to be as unconscious of acts of mercy, and easy unreasoning
over-affectionate forgiveness to offenders of any kind--juvenile or
otherwise--as if it had been a cell in Newgate, or a private torturing
chamber in the Inquisition. Perhaps Mr. Goodworth felt thus affected by