mother's.

"Dear me!" Guy tried afterward to comfort the red eyelids and tremulous
lips, "do you want a table so full it takes your appetite at sight?"

"I'm afraid I can't joke about disgrace!" Bessie quivered.

"But, Bibi dear, Mrs. Grey is simply behind the times. The _rationale_ of
those enormous meals was not munificence, but that a horde of
house-servants had to be fed at a second table."

Certainly Guy and his good spirits were excellent company. And Bessie came
of a race of women used to gay girlhoods and to settling down thereafter,
as a matter of course, into the best of house-mothers.

But there was a difference between the domestic arts she had been taught as
necessary to the future lady of a large household and the domestic
industries she had to practise. Supervising and doing were not the same.
For her mother, sewing and cooking had been accomplishments; for her they
were work. She had to do things a lady didn't do.

However, she was as fastidious about what she did for herself as about what
was done for her. She was quick and efficient. People said Bessie Osbourne
had the dearest home in town, was the best housekeeper, the most nicely
dressed on nothing. You might know Bessie Hall would have the best of
everything!

And when Bessie began to wonder if that was true, she had entered the last
circle of disappointment.