“The loss is yours, I assure you,” said Mrs. Pardiggle with her commanding deportment.  “He is a very fervid, impassioned speaker—­ full of fire!  Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now, which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for hours and hours!  By this time, young ladies,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket on it, “by this time you have found me out, I dare say?”

This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in perfect dismay.  As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour of my cheeks.

“Found out, I mean,” said Mrs. Pardiggle, “the prominent point in my character.  I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable immediately.  I lay myself open to detection, I know.  Well!  I freely admit, I am a woman of business.  I love hard work; I enjoy hard work.  The excitement does me good.  I am so accustomed and inured to hard work that I don’t know what fatigue is.”

We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or something to that effect.  I don’t think we knew what it was either, but this is what our politeness expressed.

“I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if you try!” said Mrs. Pardiggle.  “The quantity of exertion (which is no exertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing), that I go through sometimes astonishes myself.  I have seen my young family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!”

If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had already looked, this was the time when he did it.  I observed that he doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of his cap, which was under his left arm.

“This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds,” said Mrs. Pardiggle.  “If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to say, I tell that person directly, ’I am incapable of fatigue, my good friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.’  It answers admirably!  Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have your assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare’s very soon.”

At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect.  But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications.  That I was inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of view.  That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must be essential to such a work.  That I had much