"Very well done!" said my grandmother; "very well done, sir--you have succeeded better than I expected." The foreign-looking gentleman bowed and smiled, showing his white teeth through a dark overhanging moustache, as my grandmother bent forward again from the easy-chair, and raised her double silver-rimmed eye-glass. Now, Josephine and myself had been sent to her room on some household errand connected with the coming festivities of Christmas, and were not sorry to find the door slightly ajar. We had seen the strange-looking gentleman, with the large square case, arrive, and knew that it was not his first visit to the sitting-room, which we young people never entered without knocking first for admittance. Everybody said Madam Evelyn was peculiar; but everybody loved her, or rather regarded her with that mingling of trust and respect which we call deference, in its warmest and most grateful sense. This was one of her peculiarities, that her room was held free of all intrusion, except from such visitors as she chose to admit. I do not believe papa, her favorite son, ever broke through the rule of asking audience, though she had made his home her home for many a year. Poor mamma used to declare that she envied her this privilege. _Her_ chamber was a perfect thoroughfare. The seamstress always occupied one corner. The servants were coming for orders incessantly. Maude, my oldest sister, who had her grandmother's name, retreated to mamma's lounge if she chanced to disagree with Elizabeth, and at any hour of the day a little horde of Goths, in the shape of us younger children, were liable to overrun and take possession of this neutral territory between the parlor and the nursery. Poor mamma! no wonder her favorite expressions were--"I'm sure I shall go distracted some day," and "I am just ready to die." I dare say she was at any time; but there seemed to be no refuge. Grandmother often remonstrated with her, and told her that every person needed some time in the day to collect their thoughts, and balance accounts with themselves. After these talks, mamma would sometimes make the attempt to have an undisturbed five minutes, "sitting with closed doors;" but nurse would come with the baby, Charley with his cut finger, Josephine with her torn frock or hard spelling lesson, and I with a mutilated doll that required instant surgical aid. Maude and Elizabeth were sure to have a dispute about the joint occupancy of some desk or closet; the cook was in want of some receipt, or the newspaper carrier insisted on sixty cents for the "Journal," and could not be put off. No wonder that mamma was always "nervous" and delicate, and that those periods of seclusion were few and far between.