in London."

"What's the good of _him_!"

Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.

"You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in
London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit
there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an
ungrateful little brat."

I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of
a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my
aunt.

Had said my aunt: "There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I
saw such a thing to mope as a woman."

My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled
all day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.

My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite
attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the
garden beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the
white and yellow crocuses decking the grass.

"I want a husband," had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously
childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I
was reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; "I
hate not having a husband."