Finch each evinced coolness, of different degrees and from different causes. Mr. Lee was a person of correct ideas; but, as he would sometimes deprecatingly confess, he was human, and had his moments of weakness like other mortals. Armies of these moments, in battalions of sixty, had assailed him since he woke this morning. Descending upon him with barbarian irregularity, they unfurled all sorts of prophetical banners, descriptive generally of domestic incident--of a house fragrant with candle and warm linen, haunted by bland mediciners and mysterious women with accusing in their eyes, while a nervous husband and a nervous father, keeping grim silence in the parlor, trembled together on the borders of a new relationship, which ever and anon, climaxed by a distant bleating, heard on the opening of a door, put him to total confusion. Recollecting, however, that a well-bred man displays no emotion, he gradually overcame the weakness that had absolutely led him in one fit of aberration to fill his cup from the milk-jug and flavor with a drop or two of coffee, and perused his newspaper with an indifferent lounge, or chatted easily with one or two gentleman arrivals while the important preparations were going on. This, however, was but indifference: Mrs. Finch’s feeling was one of undisguised sorrow. She was the charwoman, had come to help; and seemed to think it her duty to express in her countenance what her experience of marital existence had been; and as it was pretty generally known that the late Mr. Finch used to get drunk at frequent intervals, and chastise his wife with a light poker, it was only necessary to shake her head and sigh now and then to express all the meaning she intended. Mrs. Finch, however, was a person to whom trouble was so natural and the rule, that her experience went for nothing. If in the course of any week Johnny did not fall down an area, or omitted to be sent to the station-house for breaking a window, Billy was pretty sure to take the measles or something of that sort, Sarah Jane lose herself for a day or two to be restored in tears by the police, or the chimney catch fire. If it rained, Mrs. Finch’s clogs were broken; if it didn’t, Gracious knew how soon it would, and her shoes leaked; but however circumstances smiled upon her generally, she had at least a few weeks’ rent to make up with the “broker’s man” looming in the distance. Poor Mrs. Finch! A thousand such as she grow lean-visaged by multiplicity of such very ludicrous and very real troubles, and their experience also goes for nothing.