Well! That's reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we were not such creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn't have reason to be astonished half so often.'

By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that agreeable mingling of cordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat down near her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon the table.

`There's nothing astonishing,' he said, `in my having conceived a desire to see your sister, Mr. John, or in my having gratified it in my own way. As to the regularity of my visits since (which she may have mentioned to you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into a habit; and we are creatures of habit--creatures of habit!'

Putting his hands into his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, he looked at the brother and sister as if it were interesting to him to see them together; and went on to say, with a king of irritable thoughtfulness: `It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are capable of better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness--that confirms and deepens others of us in villany--more of us in indifference--that hardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay, like images, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions and convictions. You shall judge of its influence on me, John. For more years than I need name, I had my small, and exactly defined share, in the management of Dombey's House, and saw your brother (who has proved himself a scoundrel! Your sister will forgive my being obliged to mention it) extending and extending his influence, until the business and its owner were his football; and saw you toiling at your obscure desk every day; and was quite content to be as little troubled as I might be, out of my own strip of duty, and to let everything about me go on, day by day, unquestioned, like a great machine--that was its habit and mine--and to take it all for granted, and consider it all right. My Wednesday nights came regularly round, our quartette parties came regularly off, my violoncello was in good tune, and there was nothing wrong in my world--or if anything not much--or little or much, it was no affair of mine.'

`I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all that time than anybody in the House, Sir,' said John Carker.

`Pooh! Good-natured and easy enough, I dare say,' returned the other, `a habit I had. It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: it suited me best of all. I did what was allotted to me to do, made no court to either of them, and was glad to occupy a station in which none was required. So I should have gone on till now, but that my room had a thin wall. You can tell your sister that it was divided from the Manager's room by a wainscot partition.'

`They were adjoining rooms; had been one, perhaps, originally; and were separated, as Mr. Morfin says,' said her brother, looking back to him for the resumption of his explanation.

`I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole of Beethoven's Sonata in B, to let him know that I was within hearing,' said Mr. Morfin; `but he never heeded me. It happened seldom enough that I was within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. But when I was, and couldn't otherwise avoid knowing something of it, I walked out. I walked out once, John, during a conversation between two brothers, to which, in the beginning, young Walter Gay was a party. But I overheard some of it before I left the room. You remember it sufficiently, perhaps, to tell your sister what its nature was?'

`It referred, Harriet,' said her brother in a low voice, `to the past, and to our relative positions in the House.'

`Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit--the habit of nine-tenths of the world--of believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it,' said their visitor; `and induced me to recall the history of the two brothers, and to ponder on it. I think it was almost the first time in my life when I fell into this train of reflection--how will many things that are familiar, and quite matters of course to us now, look when we come to see them from that new and distant point of