"Thought you despised the papers?" said Mrs. Iden. "Thought there was nothing but lies and rubbish in them, according to you?" "No more thur bean't." "You always take good care to read them, though." "Hum!" Another deep grunt, and another slight turn of the chair. He could not answer this charge of inconsistency, for it was a fact that he affected to despise the newspaper and yet read it with avidity, and would almost as soon have missed his ale as his news. However, to settle with his conscience, he had a manner of holding the paper half aslant a good way from him, and every now and then as he read uttered a dissentient or disgusted grunt. The master's taking up his paper was a signal for all other persons to leave the room, and not to return till he had finished his news and his nap. Mrs. Iden and Amaryllis, as they went out, each took as many of the dishes as they could carry, for it was uncertain when they could come in again to clear the table. The cloth must not be moved, the door opened, or the slightest sound heard till the siesta was over. "Can't clear the dinner things till four o'clock," said Mrs. Iden as she went, "and then you want your tea--senseless!" Amaryllis shut the door, and the master was left to himself. By-and-by, his cheese being finished, he dropped his newspaper, and arranged himself for slumber. His left elbow he carefully fitted to the remnant of the broken woodwork of the chair. The silk handkerchief, red and yellow, he gathered into a loose pad in his left hand for his cheek and temple to rest on. His face was thus supported by his hand and arm, while the side of his head touched and rested against the wainscot of the wall. Just where his head touched it the wainscot had been worn away by the daily pressure, leaving a round spot. The wood was there exposed--a round spot, an inch or two in diameter, being completely bare of varnish. So many nods--the attrition of thirty years and more of nodding--had gradually ground away the coat with which the painter had originally covered the wood. It even looked a little hollow--a little depressed--as if his head had scooped out a shallow crater; but this was probably an illusion, the eye being deceived by the difference in colour between the wood and the varnish around it. This human mark reminded one of the grooves worn by the knees of generations of worshippers in the sacred steps of the temple which they ascended on all-fours. It was, indeed, a mark of devotion, as Mrs. Iden and others, not very keen observers, would have said, to the god of Sleep; in truth, it was a singular instance of continued devotion at the throne of the god of Thought. It was to think that Mr. Iden in the commencement assumed this posture of slumber, and commanded silence. But thought which has been cultivated for a third of a century is apt to tone down to something very near somnolence.