“Mother in the droaring-room?” enquired Miss Sellars, ignoring the retort. “They're all of 'em in the parlour, if that's what you mean,” returned the lank young man, “the whole blooming shoot. If you stand up against the wall and don't breathe, there'll just be room for you.” Sweeping by the lank young man, Miss Sellars opened the parlour door, and towing me in behind her, shut it. “Well, Mar, here we are,” announced Miss Sellars. An enormously stout lady, ornamented with a cap that appeared to have been made out of a bandanna handkerchief, rose to greet us, thus revealing the fact that she had been sitting upon an extremely small horsehair-covered easy-chair, the disproportion between the lady and her support being quite pathetic. “I am charmed, Mr.--” “Kelver,” supplied Miss Sellars. “Kelver, to make your ac-quain-tance,” recited Mrs. Sellars in the tone of one repeating a lesson. I bowed, and murmured that the honour was entirely mine. “Don't mention it,” replied Mrs. Sellars. “Pray be seated.” Mrs. Sellars herself set the example by suddenly giving way and dropping down into her chair, which thus again became invisible. It received her with an agonised groan. Indeed, the insistence with which this article of furniture throughout the evening called attention to its sufferings was really quite distracting. With every breath that Mrs. Sellars took it moaned wearily. There were moments when it literally shrieked. I could not have accepted Mrs. Sellars' offer had I wished, there being no chair vacant and no room for another. A young man with watery eyes, sitting just behind me between a fat young lady and a lean one, rose and suggested my taking his place. Miss Sellars introduced me to him as her cousin Joseph something or other, and we shook hands. The watery-eyed Joseph remarked that it had been a fine day between the showers, and hoped that the morrow would be either wet or dry; upon which the lean young lady, having slapped him, asked admiringly of the fat young lady if he wasn't a “silly fool;” to which the fat young lady replied, with somewhat unnecessary severity, I thought, that no one could help being what they were born. To this the lean young lady retorted that it was with precisely similar reflection that she herself controlled her own feelings when tempted to resent the fat young lady's “nasty jealous temper.”