By the way, your memory is better than mine, wife: didn't we tell her how the balance stood, and she was the best pleased of the three?”  

 “'Praise God!' she cried, 'I knew, Mr. John, you did right to trust and to marry, and some day I'll see you in a big house, if God will'; and then you told her to bring up her missionary box and you gave her a sovereign, and when she put it in, her hand was shaking for joy. Her temper has got masterful since she grew old, and she is aggravating; but I know she's a good woman.”  

 “Yes, Meg wouldn't have left us if we had been down on our luck: I believe she would have seen us through and gone without wages”; and Leslie spoke with the tone of one hazarding a wild speculation. 

 “You believe, John!” clever women are sometimes befooled. “Why, have you forgotten that winter when you lost so heavily, and it looked as if we would have to go into rooms, how Margaret wanted to go out cooking to help the family, and she would have done it had not things taken a turn? Whatever be her faults,—and she has been provoking,—she is a loyal soul.”  

 “Well, we only had one bad illness, Flo, and I'll never forget the mornings when I came from my lodgings and stood on the street, and you told me what kind of night Jack had had, and the days when I toiled at the office, and you fought scarlet fever at home. You were a brave woman—without a nurse, too.”  

 “Without what—for shame, John!—when Maggie sat up all night and worked all day, and was so clever that the doctor said she had saved Jack's life—well, perhaps be admitted that I helped, but she did more than I could—I would rather have let twenty housemaids go than see Maggie leave, John, if she had given me the chance.”  

 “Margaret always had a temper, Flo, even in the old days when I was a boy, and now she's fairly roused.”  

 “It isn't temper at all now, John, or I would not be so vexed: it's her goodness which will drive her out in the end, and she'll never know one day of happiness again. She told me to-night that she was sure that there would always be trouble between her and the other servants, and as she had tried to serve us well when she was younger she would not make our home unhappy in her old age. Jack pleaded with her, and I—I nearly cried; she was quite affected, too, but she is immovable.”  

 “Well, we can do no more, and you mustn't blame yourself, Flo: it has just been a smash; and if 

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