Pepper, thus implanted in the Waddy nature, seemed to have no effect for generations. It was, however, slowly leavening their lumpishness. It was impelling them to momentary tricks of a strange vivacity. At last, the permeating was accomplished, and our hero, Ira, the first really alive Waddy, was born. I have said the first, but there was another Ira Waddy who, at one period in his brief career, showed a momentary sparkle of the smouldered flame. Of him a word anon, as his fate had to do with the fates of others, strangely interwoven with the fate of his great-nephew and namesake. CHAPTER II THE WADDYS OF DULLISH COURT, FROM WHITEGIFT TO OUR HERO While Governor Winthrop was planning the future city of Boston, he went, one rainy day, to the heights of those hills that give the spot the name of Trimountain. A violent June storm had channelled the hillsides, and strong water-courses filled the valleys. No phenomenon is idle to the observing mind. “These channels,” said the prudent governor, “shall be the streets of our future city.” He then pursued his way downward, slipping along the oozy trails, until he paused at a small pool where several little, muddy rivulets united to form a stagnancy. Here, he contemplated for a while his grave but genial visage, and smiled as his reflected face broadened or lengthened grotesquely and his pointed beard wagged in the waves of the water. “This,” said he at last, “shall be a place for pauses in city life. Here shall be a no-thoroughfare court, a lurking-place for shy respectability, for proud poverty; not quite for neediness, but for those who want and would, but will not.” Boston was laid out; the streets named themselves. This court chanced to be called Dulwich Court, which soon degraded itself to Dullish, and so it remained in nature and in name. Whitegift Waddy, and Mehitabel, his wife, floating purposeless waifs through the new settlements, drifted into Dullish Court to live dull lives and then to meekly die. There was always one son in each generation of their family, an unwholesome lad, fed on remainder biscuits and stale mince pies. Still, it gradually became aristocratic to have come in with the Pilgrims. A certain consideration began to attach itself to the family, and the current Waddy, if such phrase may be used of so very stagnant a person, was always espoused by someone of a better class than his social condition could warrant. It was generally some pale schoolmistress, or invalided housekeeper of a great mansion, who became the better half of each gentle shopkeeper of Dullish Court.