come home and put them to bed, four or five days out of every seven
in the week; but that is what he did, accepting it as one phase of
the mysterious human comedy (or was it tragedy?) in which he played
his humble part.

Mrs. Grubb was no home spirit, no goddess of the hearth. She graced
her family board when no invitation to refresh herself elsewhere had
been proffered, and that she generally slept in her own bed is as
strong a phrase as can be written on the subject. If she had been
born in Paris, at the proper time, she would have been the leader of
a salon; separated from that brilliant destiny by years, by race, and
by imperious circumstance, she wielded the same sort of sceptre in
her own circumscribed but appreciative sphere. No social occasion in
Eden Place was complete without Mrs. Grubb. With her (and some light
refreshment), a party lacked nothing; without her, even if other
conditions were favourable, it seemed a flat, stale, and unprofitable
affair. Like Robin Adair,


'She made the ball so fine;
She made th' occasion shine.'


Mrs. Grubb hanging on her front gate, duster in hand (she never
conversed quite as well without it, and never did anything else with
it), might have been a humble American descendant of Madame de Stael
talking on the terrace at Coppet, with the famous sprig of olive in
her fingers. She moved among her subjects like a barouche among
express wagons, was heard after them as a song after sermons. That
she did not fulfil the whole duty of woman did not occur to her