"Angel! you know I don't. You are nearly, as quiet as a mouse; but your mother is so very quiet. I hope the paralysis is only slight." "That's the trouble, it isn't. It's been coming on for years; during the last three years it's been downright bad; and during the last twelve months she's hardly been able to move so much as a finger." Nora reflected; how old could the child have been when the mother was taken "downright bad"? "Can she do nothing for herself?" "Can't even feed herself." "But how does she manage?" "What do you mean, how does she manage?" "Who does everything for her?" "I never heard such questions as you do ask! Who do you suppose does everything for her? Isn't there me? and isn't there Eustace? Me and Eustace always have done everything for her; she wouldn't have anybody else do anything for her not if it were ever so." "Has she any income of her own?" "I wish she had; that would be heaven below." "But on what do you live?" "Don't we let lodgings? What do you think we let 'em for? We live on our lodgings, that's what we live on; leastways mother and me; Eustace keeps himself, and a bit over now that Mr. Hooper's started giving him his old clothes. I only hope he'll keep on giving him them. The way Eustace wears out his clothes is something frightful; it always has been Eustace's weakness, wearing out his clothes." Later Nora did a sum in arithmetic. Miss Gibb had previously told her that, including rent, rates, and taxes the house cost more than forty pounds a year. Nora paid ten shillings a week; Mr. Carter, on the floor below, paid twelve and six; which meant twenty-two and sixpence a week, or fifty-eight pounds ten shillings a year; so that when rent, rates, and taxes had been paid under eighteen pounds per annum were left for the support of the Gibb family, or less than seven shillings a week. And this when times were flourishing! The rooms Nora had had been vacant more than a month before she came; small wonder Miss Gibb--as she would have put it--had "chanced" a lady. More than another week elapsed before Nora was permitted to see her landlady. She found her in the front room in the basement, which was used by Miss Gibb as well as herself to live and sleep in. There, also, were performed most of the necessary cooking operations. "Mother," explained Miss Gibb, "always does feel the cold; we can't have a fire going both in the kitchen and in here, so that's how it is. Besides, mother likes to see what's going on, don't you, mother?"