Irving, who acted as my pioneer, and to whom I am greatly indebted for smoothing my path and lightening my labors.

The visitor's daughter was already smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room.

Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed his opening point quite as neatly as he might have desired, smoothed his head from back to front as if he had just dived, and were pressing the water out--this smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with him--and took a pocket-book from his coat-pocket, and a stump of black-lead pencil from his waistcoat-pocket.