“Plain enough, I admit,” said Marcus Wilkeson; “but what will Quigg’s customers say?”

“Poor fellow!” returned Overtop.  “How feebly you hermits reason about society!  If you had knocked round town on New Year’s days, as Matt and I have often done, you would know that visitors are valued only because they swell the number of calls, and that it is entirely immaterial who they are, or who introduces them.  The militia general, the banker, the judge, the D.D., the butcher, the drygoods clerk, are units of equal value on that day, each adding one more to the score which is privately kept behind the door.  We shall be welcome; never fear for that.  You must come with us, and see for yourself.”

“I thank you,” said Marcus Wilkeson, laughing.  “No such fooleries at my time of life.”

“Very well,” said Overtop.  “Matt and I will try to represent the new firm of bachelor housekeepers creditably.  Matt will look after the pretty girls, and I after the sensible ones—­that is, if there happen to be any on this block.”

“Agreed,” observed Matthew Maltboy, catching a view of himself in a glass over the fireplace, and not wholly displeased with his appearance.

“Another thought strikes me,” said Overtop, explosively.  “It’s nearly half an hour to sunset.  I am impatient to begin my acquaintance with our fellow citizens—­our future friends, if I may so call them.  Let us look out of the windows, and see what the excellent people are doing.  Perhaps it may interest even a recluse and bookworm like you.”

“Nonsense,” rejoined Marcus Wilkeson.  “There’s no curiosity in my composition.”

And yet, when his two companions stood at the window of the little back parlor, pressing their noses against the glass, and looking out, he could not resist the temptation to join them, although he thought proper to punch them in the ribs, and call them a pair of inquisitive puppies, by way of showing how much he was superior to the great human infirmity.

CHAPTER III.

Peeps.

The uniform row of houses on the other side of a dead waste of snow, to which the attention of the three friends was ardently directed, promised, at first sight, a poor return of instruction and entertainment.  The rear view presented one dull stretch of bricks irregularly set even in those houses which displayed imposing fronts of brown stone.  The blinds were of a faded green color, and broken.  The stoops, the doors opening on them, and the steps leading down to the dirty, sodden snow, had a generic look of cheapness and frailty.  “Whatever the censorious critic might say of the front, he could not charge the rear with false pretences; for there was apparent, all over it, an utter indifference to the opinions of mankind.  Perhaps because the owners of the houses did not expect mankind to study their property from that point of view.

“Say!” was Mr. Fayette Overtop’s first remark, after a moment’s observation; “do not those rustic fences on the roofs remind you of the sweet, fresh country in summer time?” Mr. Overtop alluded to the barriers which are erected to keep people from getting into each other’s houses, and which are scaled not without difficulty even by cats.