o fall
back upon; but it is worse still in a great company to become aware
that wife and mother-in-law are talking nonsense, and that one cannot
depend upon oneself for a happy piece of wit to carry off the
stupidity of the thing.

The young married pair often sat hand in hand, he speaking and she
letting fall a word here and there--the same melody, the same clear,
bell-like sounds. It was a mental relief when Sophy, one of her
friends, came to pay a visit.

Sophy was not pretty. She was certainly free from bodily deformity,
though Kala always asserted she was a little crooked; but no eye save
a friend's would have remarked it. She was a very sensible girl, and
it never occurred to her that she might become at all dangerous here.
Her appearance was like a pleasant breath of air in the doll's house;
and air was certainly required here, as they all acknowledged. They
felt they wanted airing, and consequently they came out into the air,
and mamma-in-law and the young couple travelled to Italy.

* * * * *

"Thank Heaven that we are in our own four walls again," was the
exclamation of mother and daughter when they came home, a year after.

"There's no pleasure in travelling," said mamma-in-law. "To tell the
truth, it's very wearisome--I beg pardon for saying so. I found the
time hang heavy, though I had my children with me; and it's expensive
work, travelling, very expensive! And all those galleries one has to
see, and the quantity of things you are obliged to run after! You must
do it for decency's sake, for you're sure to be asked when you come
back; and then you're sure to be told that you've omitted to see what
was best worth seeing. I got tired at last of those endless Madonnas;
one seemed to be turning a Madonna oneself!"

"And what bad living you get!" said Kala.

"Yes," replied mamma, "no such thing as an honest meat soup. It's
miserable trash, their cookery."

And the travelling fatigued Kala: she was always fatigued, that was
the worst of it. Sophy was taken into the house, where her presence
was a real advantage.

Mamma-in-law acknowledged that Sophy understood both housewifery and
art, though a knowledge of the latter could not be expected from a
person of her limited means; and she was, moreover, an honest,
faithful girl; she showed that thoroughly while Kala lay sick--fading
away.

Where the case is everything, the case should be strong, or else all
is over. And all