"Dear, Mr. Winthrop, — what makes all this smoke here?" exclaimed Mrs. Nettley one morning, as she opened the door of his attic.
"I suppose, the wind, Mrs. Nettley," said Winthrop looking up from the book he was studying.
"O dear! — how do you manage?"
"I can't manage the smoke, Mrs. Nettley — Its resources exceed mine."
"It's that chimney!" exclaimed the good lady, standing and eyeing it in a sort of desperate concern, as if she would willingly have gone up the flue herself, so that only she could thereby have secured the smoke's doing the same. "I always knew that chimney was bad — I had it once a while myself — I'm sorry you've got it now. What do you do, Mr. Winthrop?"
"The smoke and I take turns in going out, Mrs. Nettley."
"Eh? — Does it often come in so? Can't you help it?"
"It generally takes advice with the wind, not with me, ma'am."
"But the chimney might have better advice. I'll get George to fetch a doctor — I had forgotten it was so bad, I had quite forgotten it, and you never say a word — Mr. Landholm, you never come to see us."
"I have so much else to see," he said, glancing at his book.