While he was thus proceeding, Lord Etherington, as if in a listless mood, was looking at the letters which stood ranged on the chimney-piece, and carrying on a languid dialogue with Mrs. Pott, whose person and manners were not ill adapted to her situation, for she was good-looking, and vastly fine and affected. "Number of letters here which don't seem to find owners, Mrs. Pott?" "Great number, indeed, my lord--it is a great vexation, for we are obliged to return them to the post-office, and the postage is charged against us if they are lost; and how can one keep sight of them all?" "Any love-letters among them, Mrs. Pott?" said his lordship, lowering his tone. "Oh, fie! my lord, how should I know?" answered Mrs. Pott, dropping her voice to the same cadence. "Oh! every one can tell a love-letter--that has ever received one, that is--one knows them without opening--they are always folded hurriedly and sealed carefully--and the direction manifests a kind of tremulous agitation, that marks the state of the writer's nerves--that now,"--pointing with his switch to a letter upon the chimney-piece, "that _must_ be a love-letter." "He, he, he!" giggled Mrs. Pott, "I beg pardon for laughing, my lord--but--he, he, he!--that is a letter from one Bindloose, the banker body, to the old woman Luckie Dods, as they call her, at the change-house in the Aultoun." "Depend upon it then, Mrs. Pott, that your neighbour, Mrs. Dods, has got a lover in Mr. Bindloose--unless the banker has been shaking hands with the palsy. Why do you not forward her letter?--you are very cruel to keep it in durance here." "Me forward!" answered Mrs. Pott; "the cappernoity, old, girning alewife, may wait long enough or I forward it--She'll not loose the letters that come to her by the King's post, and she must go on troking wi' the old carrier, as if there was no post-house in the neighbourhood. But the solicitor will be about wi' her one of these days." "Oh! you are too cruel--you really should send the love-letter; consider, the older she is, the poor soul has the less time to lose." But this was a topic on which Mrs. Pott understood no jesting. She was well aware of our matron's inveteracy against her and her establishment, and she resented it as a placeman resents the efforts of a radical. She answered something sulkily, "That they that loosed letters should have letters; and neither Luckie Dods, nor any of her lodgers, should ever see the scrape of a pen from the St. Ronan's office, that they did not call for and pay for."