some strange, and hitherto undreamt of interruption, into the
questionably peaceful monotony of my early career.

One fine August morning, some weeks after my tragic interview with Mr.
Dalton, I sat on the step of the outer kitchen stairway, which led
into an artistically cultivated vegetable patch at the rear of the
house, absorbed in the intensely interesting occupation of cutting
some elegantly-coloured ladies out of a superannuated fashion-plate.

On the step above me was my garden hat, inverted, into which I
deposited my paper "swells" according as I trimmed them: on the step
below me sat old Hannah, scraping some new potatoes, according to her
established principles of economy. We both worked diligently and
silently for awhile, and then old Hannah, pausing with a half cleaned
potatoe in one hand and a knife dripping with water in the other,
looked at me seriously for a moment and said half meditatively:

"Well now; arn't you the baby, Miss Amelia, to spend your time over
that foolish stuff; fitter for you be knitting a little garter, or
hemming a little handkerchief for yourself."

I smiled, and without raising my eyes from the critical curve of my
paper lady's bustle, which I was then rounding most carefully, I
answered:

"I suppose I might do better with my time, Hannah, if I knew how, but
as I don't, I'd rather be doing this than nothing."

"It says a lot for Miss Forty, then," Hannah put in indignantly, "to
think you're goin' into your teens before long and that's all you know