The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the picture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and is thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth.  The Parson says the thermometer is 15 deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift across the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all.  There were only ten persons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those were women; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the parish, anyhow.

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but it is a poor day for ideas.  He has written his wife’s name about eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther.  He hears the Mistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a lecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature.  The Parson says that it is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, and asks why he does n’t take a shovel and make a path to the gate.  Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no better fun, but it wouldn’t look well for a visitor to do it.  The Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on writing his wife’s name.

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a present of one of Stowe’s Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on Christmas, when she had n’t coal enough in the house to heat her gruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six little children and three dogs; and he did n’t believe that any of them had known what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, the woman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep the dogs alive.

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with provisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought in a new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had been sitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.

Mandeville.  Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice how extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like the sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?

The fire-tender.  In what respect?

Mandeville.  Well, you take the North American Indian.  He is never interested in anything, never surprised at anything.  He has by nature that calmness and indifference which your people of culture have acquired.  If he should go into literature as a critic, he would scalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would do nothing else.

The fire-tender.  Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of the highest breeding?

Mandeville.  I think he is calm.