"Well, there's the grand up-stairs," said Mrs. Potter, with more respect than her manner had yet testified, at this raising of difficulties on the part of Kate. "Come along, girls." They ascended to the decorated apartment before described; and there, although she found the "grand rose-wood," as it was termed by the family, to be deplorably out of tune also, Kate performed a noisy introduction and march, which she guessed would be most likely to suit her auditors; a song was then demanded, and given; and mother and daughters exchanged glances, which said very plainly--"We've drawn a prize!" "Well, I'm sure that's very nice," began Mrs. Potter. "I have no objection to engage you." Then came the discussion of terms; the greatest trial poor Kate had yet encountered. It was so difficult to name her price, so hard to bear the attempt to beat her down; yet all things must have an end; and, at length, she was finally engaged. Then, with what a feeling of relief she walked briskly on to meet Mrs. O'Toole, who was loitering about in waiting for her young mistress. "How valuable poor Mr. Gilpin's hints have been to me," thought she; "what exquisite torture that whole interview would have been, had I not, by his advice, made up my mind to treat and think of the whole affair as a business transaction, which could not touch me really." Nurse was less curious than usual--the subject was one that could only give her pain and grief, so she contented herself with Kate's general assurance that all was satisfactorily settled. The Colonel, notwithstanding all his consideration for his loving, self-forgetting child, could not suppress a groan, when he heard all the particulars she thought fit to give. "Ah, dear Kate! what costs us so dear, brings but little into our exchequer." "But I shall get more pupils, you know, and then--" "Well, God's will be done!" The lessons at Brompton began the next day; and Kate was surprised to find how rapidly the time flew in the endeavour to convey her own knowledge to her pupils; then the walk back, accompanied by Cormac, who lay outside the hall door, like a chiselled effigy of watchfulness, all the time the lesson lasted, was charming. The welcome from nurse and grandpapa! how grateful the task to work for them. "All I ask of Thee, oh Mighty Parent! is abundance of work!" she often murmured, almost aloud. Thus cheered, she wrote in a strain of unwonted gaiety to Winter, promising him an account of Mrs. Storey's _soirée_, at which nurse was determined her darling should appear in most _recherché_ costume; but, to her dismay, the object of all this care, refused to appear in anything but "a demi-toilette." "An' why won't ye show yer illigant white neck, an' arums, just to let them see what we've got in ould Ireland?"