"Where is your mother?"

"Lying down. She is tired, and has a horrid headache."

"I'm sure I don't wonder at it, toiling from morning till night for
those wretched papers. I was telling Mrs. Burnett to-day that my
mother-in-law was an authoress, but when I mentioned that she wrote for
_The Family Friend_ and _The Cheerful Visitor_, Lady Everton, who writes
in _The Court Journal_ and various grand things of that kind, said they
were quite low publications, and never got higher than the servants'
hall."

"You need not have gone into particulars, Ada. Whether my mother writes
well or ill, the pressure on her is too great to allow of her picking or
choosing; she must catch at the quickest market."

"I'm sure it is a great pity. That is the reason I stay on here, and let
you teach Cis and Charlie, though Colonel Ormonde says the sooner boys
are out of a woman's hands the better."

"If Colonel Ormonde is the old man I saw this morning, he looks more
capable of judging a dinner than what is the best training for youth."

"Old!" screamed the pretty widow. "He is not old; he is only mature. He
is very well off, too. He has a place in the country. And as to
mentioning those papers, I know nothing of such things. _The Nineteenth
Century_, or _Bow Bells_, or _The Family Friend_, they are all the same
to me. Only I am sure such a nice lady-like woman as Mrs. Liddell should
not write for the servants' hall. She must have been so handsome, too!
Fred, poor fellow, was her image. You will never be so good-looking,