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The girls are quenched, and leave the room much more quietly than they entered it.

"I hope to goodness I shall never have any nerves," says Doris pouting, as she links her arm in Honor's. "Mother is fussy and cross this morning. I believe she would like us all to sit perfectly mute through the livelong day whenever she has one of her headaches. Now don't look shocked, Honor, my girl! You know in your own heart of hearts you think so too, only you are too good to say it, even to yourself. I often wonder what mother would do if father were a poor man, and she had to make her own dresses, and do her own hair, and we had the washing done at home. Ah! that would just suit mother, wouldn't it? Fancy how delicious—a perpetual smell of washing!"

"Hush, dear!" says Honor gently, "you must not talk like that about mother; she is delicate, of course, and you know what Miss Denison says about the back being fitted to the burden."

"O, that's all very well! but you know there are burdens clapped on people's backs when they least expect it sometimes, at least so I've read in books, so I don't altogether believe in that statement."