acquaintance a dumb irritation and trouble she could never have explained.  It was so tragic, reflective, exacting.  It seemed to ask of her feelings that she could not have, to expect from her expression that was impossible.  And it stood also between her and the friends and distractions that she would like to have.  Why shouldn’t that queer man, Mr. Strozzi, who lived down below, and whose name she could not pronounce, come and sit sometimes of an evening, and amuse her and the children?  He was a “Professor of Elocution,” and said and sung comic pieces.  He was very civil and obliging too; she liked him.  Yet Miss Boyce was evidently astonished that she could make friends with him, and Minta perfectly understood the lift of her dark eyebrows whenever she came in and found him sitting there.

Meanwhile Marcella had expected her with emotion, and had meant through this experiment to bring herself truly near to the poor.  Minta must not call her Miss Boyce, but by her name; which, however, Minta, reddening, had declared she could never do.  Her relation to Marcella was not to be that of servant in any sense, but of friend and sister; and on her and her children Marcella had spent from the beginning a number of new womanish wiles which, strangely enough, this hard, strenuous life had been developing in her.  She would come and help put the children to bed; she would romp with them in their night-gowns; she would bend her imperious head over the anxious endeavour to hem a pink cotton pinafore for Daisy, or dress a doll for the baby.  But the relation jarred and limped perpetually, and Marcella wistfully thought it her fault.

Just now, however, as she sat gently swaying backwards and forwards in the rocking-chair, enjoying her tea, her mood was one of nothing but content.

“Oh, Minta, give me another cup.  I want to have a sleep so badly, and then I am going to see Miss Hallin, and stay to supper with them.”

“Well, you mustn’t go out in them nursin’ things again,” said Minta, quickly; “I’ve put you in some lace in your black dress, an’ it looks beautiful.”

“Oh, thank you, Minta; but that black dress always seems to me too smart to walk about these streets in.”

“It’s just nice,” said Minta, with decision.  “It’s just what everybody that knows you—­what your mamma—­would like to see you in.  I can’t abide them nursin’ clothes—­nasty things!”

“I declare!” cried Marcella, laughing, but outraged; “I never like myself so well in anything.”

Minta was silent, but her small mouth took an obstinate look.  What she really felt was that it was absurd for ladies to wear caps and aprons and plain black bonnets, when there was no need for them to do anything of the kind.

“Whatever have you been doing to your cheek?” she exclaimed, suddenly, as Marcella handed her the empty cup to take away.

Marcella explained shortly, and Minta looked more discontented than ever.  “A lot of low people as ought to look after themselves,” that was how in her inmost mind she generally defined Marcella’s patients.  She had been often kind and soft to her neighbours at Mellor, but these dirty, crowded Londoners were another matter.