Captain Flin has returned from sea, and he scarcely knows his own wife, she has grown so grand. He does not feel at home in the new place; and while she walks out with the card-case, he takes his pipe, and goes down to sit on Jerry Doolan's steps and smoke with him, and he goes into the house (Jerry occupies the rooms vacated by the ambitious Mrs. Flin), and sits before the window, with his boots in the seat of it, wishing it was his home still, and that these women wouldn't get such plaguy notions in their heads!
Fie, fie! Captain Flin, will you let the weaker vessel go ahead of you in ambition and enterprise, and you rest content with such humble attainments! Knock the ashes out of your pipe, man, and go up to your own door as if you had always belonged there. What if you do step on the carpets as if they were eggs, and take up every thing as if it were not made to touch, and run to the door every time you hear the bell, as if it were not the maid's place. What if you do insist upon performing your ablutions at the kitchen sink, and using the same towel with the servants, and help yourself of the edibles 'way across the table, though Sally does her best to get your plate so as to wait upon you? Watch your wife, Jerold Flin. Don't you see how easy this gentility sits upon her; and were you not born and bred in as good a station as she? You scorn it all, do you! Notwithstanding, I'll warrant me you'll not know Jerry Doolan this day twelve months! Mark my words!
Nannie's gone up to Mrs. Kinalden's to get some messages for the letter to Mr. Bond. What has happened to the old lady? She has grown so very gracious, and places a chair for Nannie, and offers her a warm doughnut which she has just fried, and then she sits down with the cat on her lap, while she talks to the girl about the old gentleman. There's a good-natured smile upon her face, and somehow Nannie forgets how old and disagreeable she thought her when she used to come to see the sick man; and puss feels quite at home on the kind lap that no longer gives her a spiteful toss upon the hard floor.
There's something come over Mrs. Kinalden, surely! Perhaps the letters that occasionally reach her from the amiable bachelor have something contagious in them, and may be they awaken in her mind a faint hope that the address, "My dear Mrs. Kinalden," may mean a little more than appears upon the surface. He says "how much he misses the comfort of his home!" too, and "what delight it will give him to be once more settled in his quiet room;" and he tells her to "take good care of puss for his sake;" and isn't that almost equal to a declaration? The old lady often draws a crumpled paper from her pocket, and carefully adjusting her spectacles upon her nose, goes over the manuscript with the forefinger of her right hand, stopping at "For my sake," and pondering the words very seriously. She doesn't know how it would do to change her situation at her time of life, although she does not feel a bit older than when she was married to Mr. Kinalden! She wonders if he, poor dear man! would rise from his grave if she should ever suffer herself to be called Mrs. Bond! He used to say that he should not lie peacefully beneath the sod if she were to drop his name for another. She was always afraid of "sperits," and if he should appear to her! and she crumples the paper up again, and thrusts it hastily into its secret receptacle, and chides herself for forgetting for one moment her buried lord, for the night is coming on, and she is not particularly courageous in the dreamy hours of darkness, and she is not sure but Mr. Kinalden's ghost will punish her for thought as well as deed.