She was a pleasant-faced little body, and very neatly dressed. There was a little fair sausage made up of rolled-up hair on each side of her face, two very shiny smooth surfaces of hair over her forehead, and a neat little white line up the centre, the whole being surmounted by one of those quaint high-crowned caps which project over to the front. In fact, there was, in spite of the potato-shoot allusion, a good deal of resemblance in little Mrs Vidler to a plump charity child, especially as she wore an apron with a bib, a white muslin kerchief crossed over her bosom, and a pair of muslin sleeves up to her elbows. The little woman was in the drawing-room armed with a duster as Valentine showed up the young ladies, and she faced round and made two little bobs, quite in the charity-school-child fashion, as taught by those who so carefully make it the first duty of such children to obey their pastors and masters, and order themselves lowly and reverently, and make bobs and bows to--all their betters. "Why, my dears, I am glad you're come," she exclaimed. "Miss Renee-- there, I beg your pardon--Mrs Morrison, what an age it is since I saw you! And only to think you are a married lady now, when only the other day you two were little things, and I used to bring you one in each hand, looking quite frightened, into this room." "Ah yes, Salome, times are changed," said Renee sadly. "How is uncle?" "Very well, my dear," said the little woman, holding her head on one side to listen in the same birdlike way adopted by her husband. "He's not in his room yet. But what beautiful flowers!" She, too, inhaled the scent precisely in her husband's fashion, before fetching a china bowl from a chiffonier, and carefully wiping it inside and out, though it was already the perfection of cleanliness. "A jug of clean water, if you please, Vidler," she said softly. "Yes, my dear," said the little man, smiling at the sisters, and giving his hands a rub together, before obeying his wife. "I was so sorry, Miss Renee--there, I must call you so, my dear; it's so natural--I was so sorry that I did not see you when you came. Only to think of my being out a whole month nursing my poor sister! I hadn't been away from the place before for twenty years, and poor Vidler was so upset without me. And I don't think," she added, nodding, "that master liked it." "I'm sure he would not," said Gertrude; and then, the little man coming in very quietly and closing the door after him, water was poured in the china bowl, the flowers duly deposited therein and placed upon a small mahogany bracket in front of a panel in the centre of the room. "There, my dears, I'll go now. I dare say he will not be long." The little woman smiled at the sisters, and the little man nodded at them in a satisfied way as if he thought them very pleasant to look upon. Then, taking his wife's hand, they toddled together out of the room.