y how much turf it takes to boil fifteen
stone of pudding; don't you, Clara? But come up-stairs, for we
haven't long, and I know you are frozen. You must dress with us,
dear; for there will be no fire in your own room, as we didn't expect
you."

"I wish we could get them to like it," said Clara, standing with one
foot on the fender, in the middle of the process of dressing, so as
to warm her toes; and her friend Emmeline was standing by her, with
her arm round her waist.

"I don't think we shall ever do that," said Mary, who was sitting
at the glass brushing her hair; "it's so cold, and heavy, and
uncomfortable when they get it."

"You see," said Emmeline, "though they did only have potatoes before,
they always had them quite warm; and though a dinner of potatoes
seems very poor, they did have it altogether, in their own houses,
you know; and I think the very cooking it was some comfort to them."

"And I suppose they couldn't be taught to cook this themselves, so as
to make it comfortable in their own cabins?" said Clara,
despondingly.

"Herbert says it's impossible," said Mary.

"And I'm sure he knows," said Clara.

"They would waste more than they would eat," said Emmeline. "Besides,
it is so hard to cook it as it should be cooked; sometimes it seems
impossible to make it soft."

"So it does," said Clara, sadly; "but if we could only have it hot
for them when they come for it, wouldn't that be better?"

"The great thing is to have it for them at all," said Mary the wise
(for she had been studying the matter more deeply than her friend);
"there are so many who as yet get none."

"Herbert says that the millers will grind up the husks and all at the
mills, so as to make the most of it; that's what makes it so hard to
cook," said Emmeline.

"How very wrong of them!" protested Clara; "but isn't Herbert going
to have a mill put up of his own?"

And so they went on, till I fear they kept the Castle Richmond dinner
waiting for full fifteen minutes.

Castle Richmond, too, would have been a dull house, as Lady
Fitzgerald had intimated, had it not been that there was a common
subject of such vital interest to the whole party. On that subject
they were all intent, and on that subject they talked the whole
evening, planning, preparing, and laying out schemes; devising how
their money might be made to go furthest; discussing deep questions
of political economy, and making, no doubt, many errors in their
discussio