I went home on Tuesday evening. I had no more very specially interesting conversations with Miss Donnithorne; but she gave me during the whole of Monday and all Tuesday, until it was time to put me into the train for my return journey, a right royal time. I can speak of it in no other way. I lived for the first time in my whole existence. She managed to open up the world for me. She did not tell me about the dead and gone great people, who to me were very musty and mouldy and impossible; but she talked of living things--of birds and beasts and flowers. She was great on flowers. She said the country was the right place to live in, and the town was a very melancholy abode, and not specially good for any one. But then she added, "It is the lot of some girls and some men and women to live in the town, and when it is they must make the best of it." I began to consider her not only a most agreeable woman, but also a very noble woman. "Now, if you lived in our house, would you make things different?" I said. "I shall--" she began, and then she stopped. "Oh yes, Dumps--yes. Your house isn't at all what it ought to be; it isn't well ordered." "How would you manage things? I wish you would tell me, Miss Donnithorne--I really do--for now I have been with you, and eaten such delicious meals, and been in such a pretty, very clean house, I see the difference." "It would be difficult for you to make much change," she said; "but of course there are always things to be done. Your house wants--" She paused to consider. There came a frown between her brows. "Dumps dear," she said after a pause, "I cannot explain just now. Your house wants--well, I will say it--to be turned topsy-turvy, inside out, round about; to be--to be made as different from what it is now as the sun is different from the moon." "If that is the case I needn't trouble," I said in a sort of desponding tone, "for Hannah won't work any harder, and I don't think I can; and father likes his meals anyhow, and the boys and I--well, I suppose we are poor; I'm sure I don't know, but there doesn't seem to be much money. It will feel so strange when I go home." "Trust to better times coming," said Miss Donnithorne. "The house can be altered. I will write to you about it." We were sitting by the fire on the last evening when she said this. I turned to her. "Why don't you tell me now?" But she said, "No; it will be best to write. The fact is, I could not tell you now; it will be best to write." "What a darling little house this is!" was my next remark. "If only we could have a sweet little house like this to live in in town, how happy I should be!" "It is a nice house," she said. "I don't think I'll give it up. In fact," she added, "I have made up my mind not to." "Were you thinking of moving?" I asked.