“So you have not dropped the old trade?” said Mary.

“I couldn’t.  Ellen is not strong enough yet to have the children on her hands all day.  I said I’d be responsible for them till Easter, and I dare say you won’t mind helping me through it as the beginning of everything.  Will you condescend?  You know I want to be your pupil too.”

“You can be no one’s pupil but your own, my dear! no one’s on earth, I mean.”

“Oh, don’t!  I know that, Mary.  I’m trying and trying to be their pupil still.  Indeed I am!  It makes me patient of Robert, and his fearful responsibility, and his good little sister, to know that my husband always thought him right, and meant him to look after me.  But as one lives on, those dear voices seem to get farther and farther away, as if one was drifting more out of reach in the fog.  I do hate myself for it, but I can’t help it.”

“Is there not a voice that can never go out of reach, and that brings you nearer to them?”

“You dear old Piety, Prudence, and Charity all in one!  That is if you have the charity to come and infuse a little of your piety and prudence into me.  You know you could always make me mind you, and you’ll make me-—what is it that Mrs. Coffinkey says?-—a credit to my position before you’ve done.  I’ve had your room got ready; won’t you come and take off your things?”

“I think, if you don’t object, I had better sleep at the schoolhouse, and come up here after David’s breakfast.”

“Very well; I won’t try to rob him of you more than can be helped.  Though you know he would be welcome here every evening if he liked.”

“Thank you very much, I can help him more at home; but I’ll come for the whole day, for I am sure you must have a great deal on your hands.”

“Well!  I’ve almost as many classes as pupils, and then there are so many interruptions.  The Colonel is always bringing something to be signed, and then people will come and offer themselves, though I’m sure I never asked them.  Yesterday there was a stupendous butler and house-steward who could also act as courier, and would do himself the honour of arranging my household in a truly ducal style.  Just as I got rid of him, came a man with a future history of the landed gentry in quest of my coat of arms and genealogy, also three wine merchants, a landscape gardener, and a woman with a pitcher of goldfish.  Emma is so soft she thinks everybody is a gentleman.  I am trying to get the good old man-servant we had in our old home to come and defend me; not that he is old, for he was a boy whom Joe trained.  Oh Mary, the bewilderment of it!” and she pushed back the little stray curly rings of hair on her forehead, while a peal at the bell was heard and a card was brought in.  “Oh!  Emma! don’t bring me any more!  Is it a gentleman?”

“Y-—es, ma’am.  Leastways it is a clergyman.”

The clergyman turned out to be a Dissenting minister seeking subscriptions, and he was sent off with a sovereign.