n to
breakfast. After dinner (which happens in the middle of the day) she
dresses them again and conducts them for a short walk along the
Rope-walk, which they call "the Esplanade." In the evening she
brings out the Bible and sets it the right way up for Miss Susan, who
begins to meditate on her decease; then sits down to a game of ecarte
with Miss Charlotte, who as yet has not turned her thoughts upon
mortality. At ten she puts them to bed. Afterwards, "the good Bunce
"--who is fifty, looks like a grenadier, and wears a large mole on
her chin--takes up a French novel, fastened by a piece of elastic
between the covers of Baxter's "Saint's Rest," and reads for an hour
before retiring. Her pay is fifty-two pounds a year, and her
attachment to the Misses Lefanu a matter of inference rather than
perception.

One morning in last May, at nine o'clock, when Miss Bunce had just
arranged the pair in front of their breakfast-plates, and was sitting
down to pour out the tea, two singers came down the street, and their
voices--a man's and a woman's--though not young, accorded very
prettily:--

"Citizens, toss your pens away!
For all the world is mad to-day--
Cuckoo--cuckoo!
The world is mad to-day."

"What unusual words for a pair of street singers!" Miss Bunce
murmured, setting down the tea-pot. But as Miss Charlotte was busy
cracking an egg, and Miss Susan in a sort of coma, dwelling perhaps
on death and its terrors, the remark went unheeded.

"Citizens, doff your coats of black,
And dress to suit the almanack--
Cuckoo--"

The voices broke off, and a rat-tat sounded on the front door.

"Say that we never give to beggars, under any circumstances,"
murmured Miss Susan, waking out of her lethargy.

The servant entered with a scrap of crumpled paper in her hand.
"There was a woman at the door who wished to see Miss Lefanu."

"Say that we never give--" Miss Susan began again, fumbling with the
note. "Bunce, I have on my gold-rimmed spectacles, and cannot read
with them, as you know. The black-rimmed pair must be up-stairs, on
the--"

"How d'ye do, my dears?" interrupted a brisk voice. In the doorway
stood a plump middle-aged woman, nodding her head rapidly. She wore
a faded alpaca gown, patched here and there, a shawl of shepherd's
plaid stained with the weather, and a nondescript bonnet. Her face
was red and roughened, as i