that your mind?'

'I can but own it,' said Dan.

The two brothers then turned their backs upon their visitors, and went on
working, and Ethelberta and her lover left the room. 'My brothers, you
perceive,' said she, 'represent the respectable British workman in his
entirety, and a touchy individual he is, I assure you, on points of
dignity, after imbibing a few town ideas from his leaders. They are
painfully off-hand with me, absolutely refusing to be intimate, from a
mistaken notion that I am ashamed of their dress and manners; which, of
course, is absurd.'

'Which, of course, is absurd,' said Christopher.

'Of course it is absurd!' she repeated with warmth, and looking keenly at
him. But, finding no harm in his face, she continued as before: 'Yet,
all the time, they will do anything under the sun that they think will
advance my interests. In our hearts we are one. All they ask me to do
is to leave them to themselves, and therefore I do so. Now, would you
like to see some more of your acquaintance?'

She introduced him to a large attic; where he found himself in the
society of two or three persons considerably below the middle height,
whose manners were of that gushing kind sometimes called Continental,
their ages ranging from five years to eight. These were the youngest
children, presided over by Emmeline, as professor of letters, capital and
small.

'I am giving them the rudiments of education here,' said Ethelberta; 'but
I foresee several difficulties in the way of keeping them here, which I
must get over as best I can. One trouble is, that they don't get enough
air and exercise.'

'Is Mrs. Chickerel living here as well?' Christopher ventured to inquire,
when they were downstairs again.

'Yes; but confined to her room as usual, I regret to say. Two more
sisters of mine, whom you have never seen at all, are also here. They
are older than any of the rest of us, and had, broadly speaking, no
education at all, poor girls. The eldest, Gwendoline, is my cook, and
Cornelia is my housemaid. I suffer much sadness, and almost misery
sometimes, in reflecting that here are we, ten brothers and sisters, born
of one father and mother, who might have mixed together and shared all in
the same scenes, and been properly happy, if it were not for the strange
accidents that have split us up into sections as you see, cutting me off
from them without the compensation of joining me to any others. They are
all true as