Certainly she was not prepared for the proposal with which Mother Carey almost rushed into the room the next day, just as she was locking up her wine, and the Colonel lingering over his first glance at the day’s Times.

“I know what to do!  Miss James is not coming back?  And you have not heard of any one?  Then, if you would only let me teach your girls with mine!  You know that is what I really can do.  Yes, indeed, I would be regular.  I always was.  You know I was, Robert, till I came here, and didn’t quite know what I was about; and I have been regular ever since the end of the holidays, and I really can teach.”

“My dear sister,” edged in the Colonel, as she paused for breath, “no one questions your ability, only the fitness of-—”

“I had thought over two things,” broke in Caroline again.  “If you don’t like me to have Jessie, and Essie, and Ellie, I would offer to prepare little boys.  I’ve been more used to them than to girls, and I know Mr. Ogilvie would be glad.  I could have the little Wrights, and Walter Leslie, and three or four more directly, but I thought you might like the other way better.”

“I can see no occasion for either,” said Ellen.  “You need no increase in income, only to attend to details.”

“And I had rather do what I can-—than what I can’t,” said Caroline.

“Every lady should understand how to superintend her own household,” said her Serene Highness.

“Granted; oh, granted, Ellen!  I’m going to superintend with all my might and main, but I don’t want to be my own upper servant, and I know I should make no hand of it, and I had much rather earn something by my wits.  I can do it best in the way I was trained; and you know it is what I have been used to ever since my own children were born.”

Ellen heaved a sigh at this obtuseness towards what she viewed as the dignified and ladylike mission of the well-born woman, not to be the bread-winner, but the preserver and steward, of the household.  Here was poor little Caroline so ignorant as actually to glory in having been educated for a governess!

The Colonel, wanting to finish his Times in peace, looked up and said, with the gracious tone he always used to his brother’s wife—-

“My good little sister, it is very praiseworthy in you to wish to exert yourself, and very kind and proper to desire to begin at home, but you must allow us a little time to consider.”

She took this as a hint to retreat; and her Serene Highness likewise feeling it a dismissal, tried at once to obviate all ungraciousness by saying, “We are preserving our magnum bonums, Caroline dear; I will send you some.”

“Magnum bonum!” gasped Caroline, hearing nothing but the name.  “Do you know-—?”

“I know the recipe of course, and can give you an excellent one.  I will come over by-and-by and explain it to you.”

Caroline stood confounded.  Had Joe revealed all to his brother?  Was it to be treated as a domestic nostrum?  “Then you know what the magnum bonum is?” she faltered.