n expenditure that is positively ruinous. However, I
think I have let her see that her housekeeping must be done upon very
different lines in future."

"You made her cry very bitterly, poor thing," said his wife. "Her eyes
were quite red when she came out of your study."

"Made her cry!" echoed the Captain contemptuously. "She is so fat that
the slightest emotion liquefies her. It isn't water, but oil that she
sheds when she makes believe to weep."

"She has been a faithful servant to me for the last twenty years,"
moaned Mrs. Winstanley.

"And she will be a much more faithful servant to you for the next
twenty years, if she lives so long. I am not going to send her away.
She is an admirable cook, and now she knows that she is not to let your
substance run out at the back door. I daresay she will be a fairly good
manager. I shall look after her rather sharply, I assure you. I was
caterer for our mess three years, and I know pretty well what a
household ought to cost per head."

"Oh, Conrad!" cried his wife piteously, "you talk as if we were an
institution, or a workhouse, or something horrid."

"My love, a man of sense ought to be able to regulate a private
establishment at least as well as a board of thick-headed guardians can
regulate a workhouse."

Poor Mrs. Trimmer had left her new master's presence sorely bowed down
in spirit. She was so abased that she could only retire to her own snug
sitting-room, a panelled parlour, with an ancient ivy-wreathed casement
looking into the stable-yard, and indulge herself with what she called
"a good cry." It was not until later that she felt equal to
communicating her grief to Forbes and Pauline, over the one-o'clock
dinner.

She had had a passage of arms, which she denominated "a stand further,"
with the Captain; but it appeared that her own stand had been feeble.
He had been going over the housekeeping accounts for the last ten
years--accounts which neither the Squire nor his wife had ever taken
the trouble to examine--accounts honestly, but somewhat carelessly and
unskillfully made out. There had been an expenditure that was
positively scandalous, Captain Winstanley told Mrs. Trimmer.

"If you're dissatisfied, sir, perhaps I'd better go," the old woman
said, tremulous with indignation. "If you think there's anything
dishonest in my accounts, I wouldn't sleep under this roof another
night, though it's been my home near upon forty year--I was
kitchen-maid in old Squi