enly
to Lady Shuttleworth, struck by the look on her face as she leaned
back, silent, in her corner.

"I do feel rather at my wits' end," said Lady Shuttleworth. "For
instance, I'm wondering whether what I'm doing now isn't a great
mistake."

"What you are doing now?"

"Taking you to see Tussie."

"Oh but I promise to be cheerful. I'll tell him how comfortable we
are. He'll see I look well taken care of."

"But for all that I'm afraid he may--he may--"

"Why, we're going to be tremendously taken care of. Even he will see
that. Only think--I've engaged twenty-five cooks."

"Twenty-five cooks?" echoed Lady Shuttleworth, staring in spite of her
sorrows. "But isn't my kitchenmaid--?"

"Oh she left us almost at once. She couldn't stand my uncle. He is
rather difficult to stand at first. You have to know him quite a long
while before you can begin to like him. And I don't think kitchenmaids
ever would begin."

"But my dear, twenty-five cooks?"

And Priscilla explained how and why she had come by them; and though
Lady Shuttleworth, remembering the order till now prevailing in the
village and the lowness of the wages, could not help thinking that
here was a girl more potent for mischief than any girl she had ever
met, yet a feeble gleam of amusement did, as she listened, slant
across the inky blackness of her soul.

Tussie was sitting up in bed with a great many pillows behind him,
finding immense difficulty in breathing, when his mother, her bonnet
off and every trace of having been out removed, came in and said Miss
Neumann-Schultz was downstairs.

"Downstairs? Here? In this house?" gasped Tussie, his eyes round with
wonder and joy.

"Yes. She--called. Would you like her to come up and see you?"

"Oh mother!"

Lady Shuttleworth hurried out. How could she bear this, she thought,
stumbling a little as though she did not see very well. She went
downstairs with the sound of that Oh mother throbbing in her ears.

Tussie's temperature, high already, went up by leaps during the few
minutes of waiting. He gave feverish directions to the nurse about a
comfortable chair being put exactly in the right place, about his
pillows being smoothed, his medicine bottles hidden, and was very
anxious that the flannel garment he was made to wear when ill, a
garment his mother called a nightingale--not after the bird but the
lady--and that was the bluest flannel garment ever seen, should be
arranged neatly over his narrow che