“Not suit your columns!” she said, looking at us by no means in sorrow, but in great anger. “You do not mean to trifle with me like that after all you have made me suffer?” We protested that we were responsible for none of her sufferings. “Sir,” she said, “when I was last here you owned the wrong you had done me.” We felt that we must protest against this, and we rose in our wrath. There were two of us angry now. “Madam,” we said, “you have kindly offered us your essay, and we have courteously declined it. You will allow us to say that this must end the matter.” There were allusions here to kindness and courtesy, but the reader will understand that the sense of the words was altogether changed by the tone of the voice. “Indeed, Sir, the matter will not be ended so. If you think that your position will enable you to trample upon those who make literature really a profession, you are very much mistaken.” “Mrs. Brumby,” we said, “we can give you no other answer, and as our time is valuable----” “Time valuable!” she exclaimed,--and as she stood up an artist might have taken her for a model of Minerva had she only held a spear in her hand. “And is no time valuable, do you think, but yours? I had, Sir, your distinct promise that the paper should be published if it was left in your hands above a week.” “That is untrue, Madam.” “Untrue, Sir?” “Absolutely untrue.” Mrs. Brumby was undoubtedly a woman, and might be very like a goddess, but we were not going to allow her to palm off upon us without flat contradiction so absolute a falsehood as that. “We never dreamed of publishing your paper.” “Then why, Sir, have you troubled yourself to read it,--from the beginning to the end?” We had certainly intimated that we had made ourselves acquainted with the entire essay, but we had in fact skimmed and skipped through about a third of it. “How dare you say, Sir, you have never dreamed of publishing it, when you know that you studied it with that view?” “We didn’t read it all,” we said, “but we read quite enough.” “And yet but this moment ago you told me that you had perused it carefully.” The word peruse we certainly never used in our life. We object to “perusing,” as we do to “commencing” and “performing.” We “read,” and we “begin,” and we “do.” As to that assurance which the word “carefully” would intend to convey, we believe that we were to that extent guilty. “I think, Sir,” she continued, “that you had better see the lieutenant.” “With a view to fighting the gentleman?” we asked.