with her match, and sorely hated her match when she found it. What if she were to tell Diana of those letters of Evan? But then Diana would be off to the ends of the earth with _him_. Better keep her in the village, perhaps. Mrs. Starling grew more and more impatient. "Diana, you are a big fool!" she burst out. Diana at that moment thought _not_. She did not answer. Both were sitting before the wide fireplace, and Diana had not moved since Mr. Masters left them. "What sort of a life do you expect you are going to have?" "I don't know, mother." "You, who might marry the richest man in town!--And live in plenty, and have just your own way, and everything you want! You _are_ a fool I Do you know what it means to be a poor minister's wife?" "I shall know, I suppose. That is, if Mr. Masters is poor. I don't know whether he is or not." "He is of course! They all are." "Well, mother. You have taught me how to keep house on a little." "Yes, you and me; that's one thing. It's another thing when you have a shiftless man hanging round, and a dozen children or so, and expected to be civil to all the world. They always have a house full of children, and they are all shiftless." "Who, mother?" "Poor ministers." "Father hadn't--and wasn't." "He was as shiftless a man as ever wore shoe-leather; he wasn't a bit of help to a woman. All he cared for was to lose his time in his books; and that's the way this man'll do, and leave you to take the brunt of everything. _Your_ time'll go in cookin' and mendin' and washin' up; and you'll have to be at everybody's beck and call at the end o' that. If there's anything _I_ hate, it's to be in the kitchen and parlour both at the same time." Diana was silent. "You might have lived like a queen." "I don't want to live like a queen." "You might have had your own way, Diana." "I don't care about having my own way." "I wish you would care, then, or had a speck of spirit. What's life good for?" "I wish I knew"--said Diana wearily, as she rose and set back her chair. "You never will know, in that man's house. I do think, ministers are the meanest lot o' folks there is; and that you should go and take one of them!"-- "It is the other way, mother; he has taken me," said Diana, half laughing at what seemed to her the disproportion between her mother's passion and the occasion for it. "You were a fool to let him." "I don't think so." "You'll be sorry yet." "Why?" "They're a shiftless lot," said Mrs. Starling rather evasively, "the whole of 'em. And this one has a way of holding his own in other folks' houses, that is intolerable to me! I never liked him, not from the very first." "I always liked him," said Diana simply; and she went off to her room. She had not expected that her mother would favour the arrangement; on the contrary; and it had all been settled much more easily than she had looked for. CHAPTER XXI. UNSETTLED.