in her own way. And before she began to do this she
took the trouble to have every thing cleared away and the trays brought
down, that her boarders (chiefly German) might leave their plates and be
driven to their pipes.

"If you please, Miss Castlewood," Mrs. Strouss said, grandly, "do you or
do you not approve of the presence of 'my man,' as he calls himself?--an
improper expression, in my opinion; such, however, is their nature. He
can hold his tongue as well as any man, though none of them are very
sure at that. And he knows pretty nigh as much as I do, so far as his
English can put things together, being better accustomed in German. For
when we were courting I was fain to tell him all, not to join him under
any false pretenses, miss, which might give him grounds against me."

"Yes, yes, it is all vere goot and true--so goot and true as can be."

"And you might find him come very handy, my dear, to run of any kind of
messages. He can do that very well, I assure you, miss--better than any
Englishman."

Seeing that he wished to stay, and that she desired it, I begged him
to stop, though it would have been more to my liking to hear the tale
alone.

"Then sit by the door, Hans, and keep off the draught," said his
Wilhelmina, kindly. "He is not very tall, miss, but he has good
shoulders; I scarcely know what I should do without him. Well, now, to
begin at the very beginning: I am a Welshwoman, as you may have heard.
My father was a farmer near Abergavenny, holding land under Sir Watkin
Williams, an old friend of your family. My father had too many girls,
and my mother scarcely knew what to do with the lot of us. So some of us
went out to service, while the boys staid at home to work the land. One
of my sisters was lady's-maid to Lady Williams, Sir Watkin's wife, at
the time when your father came visiting there for the shooting of the
moor-fowl, soon after his marriage with your mother. What a sweet good
lady your mother was! I never saw the like before or since. No sooner
did I set eyes upon her but she so took my fancy that I would have gone
round the world with her. We Welsh are a very hot people, they say--not
cold-blooded, as the English are. So, wise or foolish, right, wrong, or
what might be, nothing would do for me but to take service, if I
could, under Mrs. Castlewood. Your father was called Captain Castlewood
then--as fine a young man as ever clinked a spur, but without any boast
or conceit about him; and th