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Boston was laid out; the streets named themselves. This court chanced to be called Dulwich Court, which soon degraded itself to Dullish, and so it remained in nature and in name.

Whitegift Waddy, and Mehitabel, his wife, floating purposeless waifs through the new settlements, drifted into Dullish Court to live dull lives and then to meekly die. There was always one son in each generation of their family, an unwholesome lad, fed on remainder biscuits and stale mince pies. Still, it gradually became aristocratic to have come in with the Pilgrims. A certain consideration began to attach itself to the family, and the current Waddy, if such phrase may be used of so very stagnant a person, was always espoused by someone of a better class than his social condition could warrant. It was generally some pale schoolmistress, or invalided housekeeper of a great mansion, who became the better half of each gentle shopkeeper of Dullish Court.

These wives brought refinement and education with them; so that, at last, could they have sunk the shop, the Waddys would have been admitted as gentlefolk anywhere. They enjoyed, too, the consciousness of being better in rank than their neighbours. They never spoke of Whitegift as the cook, but as the Steward, or sometimes the Purveyor, of the Mayflower. They liked to walk through Beacon Street and smile placidly at the efforts of new people to win position by great houses, crowded balls and routs, and promotion marriages.