"Asking your pardon for troubling you, sir," Nurse Bundle began in a choky voice, "but as you made no mention of it yourself, sir, your kindness being what it is, and the young gentleman as good as gone to school, and me eating the bread of idleness ever since that tutor come, I wished to know, sir, when you thought of giving me notice." "Give you notice to do what?" asked my father. "To leave your service, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, steadily. "There's no nurse wanted in this establishment now, sir." My father laid one hand on Mrs. Bundle's shoulder, and with the other he drew forward a miniature of my mother which always hung on a standing frame on the writing-table. "It is like yourself to be so scrupulous," he said; "but you will never again speak of leaving us, Mrs. Bundle. Please, for her sake," added my father, his own voice faltering as he looked towards the miniature. As for Nurse Bundle, her tears utterly forbade her to get out a word. "If you have too much to do," my father went on, "let a young girl be got to relieve you of any work that troubles you; or, if you very much wish for a home to yourself, I have no right to refuse that, though I wish you could be happy under my roof, and I will see about one of those cottages near the gate. But you will not desert me--and Reginald--after so many years." "The day I do leave will be the breaking of my heart," sobbed Nurse Bundle, "and if there was any ways in which I could be useful--but take wages for nothing, I could not, sir." "Mrs. Bundle," said my father, "if your wages were a matter of any importance to me, if I could not afford even to pay you for your work, I should still ask you to share my home, with such comforts as I had to offer, and to help me so far as you could, for the sake of the past. I must always be under an obligation to you which I can never repay," added my father, in his rather elaborate style. "And as to being useful, well, ahem, if you will kindly continue to superintend and repair my linen and Master Reginald's ----" "Why, bless your innocence, sir, and meaning no disrespect," said Mrs. Bundle, "but there ain't no mending in _your_ linen. There was some darning in the tutor's socks, but you give away half-a-dozen pair last Monday, sir, as hadn't a darn in 'em no bigger than a pea." I think it was the allusion to "giving away" that suggested an idea to my father in his perplexity for employing Nurse Bundle. "Stay," he exclaimed, "Mrs. Bundle, there is a way in which you could be of the greatest service to me. I often feel that the loss of a lady at the head of my household must be especially felt among the poor people around us--additionally so, as Mr. Andrewes is not married, and there is no lady either at the Rectory or here to visit the sick and encourage the mothers and children. I fear that when I do anything for them it is often in a wrong way, or for wrong objects."