second story.

'Don't speak so loud, marm. Johnny has just gone to sleep, and I've had
such trouble with him all the evening; he must have caught cold going to
dancing school. You know, marm I begged you not to send him.

'Mrs. Phillips,' whispered Mary, in a crushed voice, 'where has Susan
gone?'

'She went to her sister's, marm. Her child is very ill with the small
pox, and she said she knew, if you knew he might die, that you would let
her go and sit up with him this last night, poor, dear soul, bless his
heart!'

Oh, how I chuckled!

'Why, Mrs. Phillips, just come down stairs, please; I want to speak to
you.--Come into the library, only Mr. D'Aubrey is here.'

(Humph! ONLY Mr. D'Aubrey!--'Oh, for to-morrow!')

Enter Mrs. Phillips, one of those fat, pylygastric nurses, who divide
the twenty-four hours into four days, so as to have three meals to each
of their diurnal revolutions; whose digestive organs, if they could
speak, would strike for wages; whose eyes move but never look; their
atmosphere--what Germans might call expression--being that of massive
rest.

She slides into the room and immediately sits down, moving her eyes up
to her mistress with a patient and slightly suffering expression, while
the process of deglutition is slowly going on.

I seize a book, pamphlet, anything, hold it in front of my face, and
bite my segar in two.

'Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Phillips, that Susan had gone to sit
up with a _small pox_ patient?'

'Her nephew, yes marm.'

'Oh, how very wrong in her--how--'

'I don't think so, marm.'

I ground my teeth.

'Why Mrs. Phillips?'

'The boy marm, may not be yours, but it is her _kin_ and she ought to
know her duty to a sister's child.'

'Yes, but she might bring the disease to my little children!
she'--'That's in the hands of Providence, marm.'

I ram a handkerchief down my mouth and choke--

'Well, as it is not your fault I need not speak to you--but please be so
kind as to call Thomas, I only want him for a moment.' The celebrated
Mrs. Phillips heaved a sigh, pregnant with bread, butter, cold meat and
ale; and slid out of the room, crunching her way down stairs. I peeped
at my sister--she looked pale and very anxiously perplexed, I pinched
myself and kept silent. In a few minutes a voice was heard singing up
the back stairs and--enter Sabina spread out with starch and heavily
pomaded hair. 'Mrs. Phillips sent me to tell you marm that she had to
make h