'overdo' herself, and rather than that should happen he desired her to
let the business go to the--ahem! He made her write every day to say
how she was, and was wretched till he returned to relieve her of her
arduous duties. She made friends with me during the scarlet fever
epidemic. Number eight was a baby then, and she was afraid he might
catch the disease and be taken to the hospital and die for want of her;
and I sympathised strongly with her denunciations of the cruelty of the
act. Fancy taking little babies from their mothers! Barbarous, don't
you think it? One day a lady came into the shop while I was there. She
was dressed in a bright pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in
pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs.
Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently
acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her
own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a lady' and
'a real lady.'"

One of Ideala's exploits got into the paper somehow, and she was
annoyed about it, and anxious to make us believe the account of the
risk she ran had been greatly exaggerated. I was present when she gave
her own version of the story, which was characteristic in every way.

"I heard frantic cries from the river," she said. "Some one was
shrieking, 'The child will be drowned!' and I ran to see what was the
matter. A man was tearing up and down on the bank, a child was
struggling in the water, and as there was nobody else to be seen he
looked to _me_ for assistance! I advised him to go in and bring
the child out, but the idea did not appear to commend itself to him, so
he took to running up and down again, bawling, 'The child will be
drowned!' And indeed it seemed very likely; so I was obliged to go in
and bring it out myself. The man was overjoyed when I restored it to