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It so happened that Mrs. Parker had sent the chambermaid out, and this the cook knew very well; but cook was in a bad humour about something, and didn’t choose to do any thing not in the original contract. She was a good domestic, and had lived with Mrs. Parker for some years. She had her humours, as every one has, but these had always been borne with by her mistress. Too many fretting incidents had just occurred, however, and Mrs. Parker’s mind was not so evenly balanced as usual. Nancy’s words and manner provoked her too far, and she replied, “Very well; go in welcome.”

Here was a state of affairs tending in no degree to increase the happiness of the retired tradesman. His wife met him at the supper-table with knit brows and tightly compressed lips. Not a word passed during the meal.

After supper, Mr. Parker looked around him for some means of passing the time. The newspapers were read through; it still rained heavily without; he could not ask his wife to play a game at backgammon.

“Oh dear!” he sighed, reclining back upon the sofa, and there he lay for half an hour, feeling as he had never felt in his life. At nine o’clock he went to bed, and remained awake for half the night.

Much to his satisfaction, when he opened his eyes on the next morning, the sun was shining into his window brightly. He would not be confined to the house so closely for another day.

A few weeks sufficed to exhaust all of Mr. Parker’s time-killing resources. The newspapers, he complained, did not contain any thing of interest now. Having retired on his money, and set up for something of a gentleman, he, after a little while, gave up visiting at the shops of his old fellow-tradesmen. He did not like to be seen on terms of intimacy with working people! Street-walking did very well at first, but he tired of that; it was going over and over the same ground. He would have ridden out and seen the country, but he had never been twice on horseback in his life, and felt rather afraid of his neck. In fact, nothing was left to him, but to lounge about the house the greater portion of his time, and grumble at every thing; this only made matters worse, for Mrs. Parker would not submit to grumbling without a few words back that cut like razors.

From a contented man, Mr. Parker became, at the end of six months, a burden to himself. Little things that did not in the least disturb him before, now fretted him beyond measure. He had lost the quiet, even temper of mind that made life so pleasant.

A year after he had given up business he met Mr. Steele for the first time since his retirement from the shop.

“Well, my old friend,” said that gentleman to him familiarly, “how is it with you now? I understand you have retired from business.”

“Oh yes; a year since.”

“So long? I only heard of it a few weeks ago. I have been absent from the city. Well, do you find doing nothing any easier than manufacturing good hats and serving the community like an honest man, as you did for years? What is your experience worth?”

“I don’t know that it is worth any thing, except to myself; and it is doubtful whether it isn’t too late for even me to profit by it.”

“How so, my friend? Isn’t living on your money so pleasant a way of getting through the world as you had supposed it to be?”

“I presume there cannot be a pleasanter way; but we are so constituted that we are never happy in any position.”

“Perhaps not positively happy, but we may be content.”

“I doubt it.”

“You were once contented.”

“I beg you pardon; if I had been, I would have remained in business.”

“And been a much more contented man than you are now.”