However, the boarding-house was ready at last. She entered possession, and with some help prepared to receive visitors. My wife, myself, and some friends were her first "paying guests," paying, of course, the usual charges. We spent a miserable three weeks. We were not of the class she wanted and had been used to; she kept us in our places. I had to speak to her, and treat her as a distinguished, but quite unknown, lady. We were all glad when our time for leaving came; neither have we paid her another visit. She was a remarkable woman, indomitable, industrious, and clever: cooking, or managing a house, needlework, dressmaking, or anything pertaining to woman's life, she was equal to; but her superiority was too much for us all. We could not live up to it--the strain was too great. She, however, did us a great honour the day previous to our leaving. As a special favour, she invited us to take tea with her in the "boudoir." The remembrance of that occasion remains with me through the years. She prepared not only a nice little tea, with cream, knick-knacks, etc., but the room was tastefully decorated, and she was suitably arrayed. Her old silks and laces had been renovated, her old jewellery polished and attended to; and at a definite time, after a formal invitation, we were ushered into the "boudoir." She rose and gracefully bowed as we were announced, and directed us to our seats. We had a stiff time of it. No doubt it was good discipline for us all, for we realized more fully than ever the inferiority of our birth, breeding, and manners. Poor woman! She never forgave us for knowing that she had been in the "abyss," neither did she ever forgive me for helping her out. Our acquaintance ended with that five o'clock tea in her "boudoir." She has not written to me, neither have I inquired after her. Freely will I forgive her all the snubs and insults she flung at me if she will "keep her distance." She was a terror. One in a lifetime is quite sufficient for me. Still, she was a good woman, and I can only suppose that privations and disappointments had on the one side embittered her, and on the other had developed a natural feeling until it became a craze, and the idea of being a "lady" dominated her existence. Some men, too, that have come down are by no means pleasant companions--often the reverse. Several clergymen that I saw much of were too terrible for words, so I pass them; but of one I must tell, for when I called on him in the early afternoon, he was lying on a miserable bed, unwashed, wearing a cassock. Penny packets of cigarettes--five for a penny--were strongly in evidence. There being no chairs in the room, I sat down upon an inverted packing-case.