household, he might have described it thus:-

Mrs. S. Cora Grubb, widow, aged forty years.

'Alisa Bennett, feeble-minded, aged ten or twelve years.

'Atlantic and Pacific Simonson, twins, aged four years.'

The man of statistics might seek in vain for some principle of
attraction or cohesion between these independent elements; but no one
who knew Mrs. Grubb would have been astonished at the sort of family
that had gathered itself about her. Queer as it undoubtedly was at
this period, it had, at various times, been infinitely queerer.
There was a certain memorable month, shortly after her husband's
decease, when Mrs. Grubb allowed herself to be considered as a
compensated hostess, though the terms 'landlady' and 'boarder' were
never uttered in her hearing. She hired a Chinese cook, who slept at
home; cleared out, for the use of Lisa and the twins, a small
storeroom in which she commonly kept Eldorado face-powder; and
herself occupied a sofa in the apartment of a friend of humanity in
the next street. These arrangements enabled her to admit an
experimenter on hypnotism, a mental healer who had been much abused
by the orthodox members of her cult, and was evolving a method of her
own, an ostensible delegate to an Occidental Conference of Religions,
and a lady agent for a flexible celluloid undershirt. For a few days
Mrs. Grubb found the society of these persons very stimulating and
agreeable; but before long the hypnotist proved to be an unscrupulous
gentleman, who hypnotised the mental healer so that she could not
heal, and the Chinese cook so that he could not cook. When,
therefore, the delegate departed suddenly in company with the