"Why, _he_ was,--Mr. BUMSTEAD. It gave me the funniest feeling! It was as though some one was trying to see through you, you know." "My child!" exclaimed Miss PENDRAGON, dropping her cheek-distenders upon the bureau, "you speak strangely. Has that man gained any power over you?" "No, dear," returned FLORA, wiping off a part of her left eyebrow with cold cream. "But didn't you see? He was looking right down my throat all the time I was singing, until it actually tickled me!" "Does he always do so?" "Oh, I don't know what he always does!" whimpered the nervous Flowerpot. "Oh, he's such an utterly ridiculous creature! Sometimes when we're in company together, and I smell cloves, and look at him, I think that I see the lid of his right eye drop over the ball and tremble at me in the strangest manner. And sometimes his eyes seem fixed motionless in his head, as they did to-night, and he'll appear to wander off into a kind of dream, and feel about in the air with his right arm as though he wanted to hug somebody. Oh! my throat begins to tickle again! Oh, stay with me, and be my absurdly ridiculous friend!" The dark-featured Southern linen spectre leaned soothingly above the other linen spectre, with a bottle of camphor in her hand, near the bureau upon which the back-hair of both was piled; and in the flash of her black eyes, and the defiant flirt of the kid-gloves dipped in glycerine which she was drawing on her hands, lurked death by lightning and other harsh usage for whomsoever of the male sex should ever be caught looking down in the mouth again. CHAPTER VIII. A DAGGERY TYPE OF FORTALKRAPHY. The two young gentlemen, having seen their blooming charges safely within the door of the Alms-House, and vainly endeavored to look through the keyhole at them going up-stairs, scuffle away together with that sensation of blended imbecility and irascibility which is equally characteristic of callow youth and inexperienced Thomas Cats when retiring together from the society of female friends who seem to be still on the fence as regards their ultimate preferences. "Do you bore your friends here long, Mr. DROOD?" inquired MONTGOMERY; as who should say: Maouiw-ow-ooo-sp't! sp't! "Not this time, Secesh," is the answer; as though it were observed, ooo-ooo-sp't! "I leave for New York again to-morrow; but shall be off and on again in Bumsteadville until midsummer, when I go to Egypt, Illinois, to be an engineer on a railroad. The stamps left me by my father are all in the stock of that road, and the Mr. BUMSTEAD whom you saw to-night is my uncle and guardian." "Mr. SIMPSON informs me that you are destined to assume the expenses of Miss POTTS, when you're old enough," remarks MONTGOMERY, his eyes shining quite greenly in the moonlight. "Well, perhaps you'd like to make something out of it," says EDWIN, whose orbs have assumed a yellowish glitter. "Perhaps you Southern Confederacies didn't get quite enough of it at Gettysburgh and Five Forks."