"Poor laddies!" she would say, "they need mothering," and her ample breast swelled with pity at the picture of their loneliness in shabby London lodgings, where they did unequal battle with rapacious land-ladies. Not that she herself was childless; she was the proud mother of two of the most odious children in the locality, who spent their whole time in making life intolerable to their neighbours. But to her, of course, they were merely riotous young angels, whose mischief was the proof of hearty spirits, and whose worst faults reposed upon a solid base of good intentions. Life for these youngsters was merely a joke and an adventure, and, to tell the truth, Mrs. Bundy's view of life was not unlike theirs. Her whole existence had been fugitive and precarious, for her husband was a speculator who had followed for thirty years the will-o'-the-wisp of sudden fortune. He was a solemn little man, with large, dreamlike eyes, whose immense power of industry had been almost uniformly turned in wrong directions. At the whisper of gold, silver, lead, coal, nitrates, oil, land-booms, he was ready at a moment's notice to wander off into the most inaccessible places of the earth, from which he returned sometimes penniless, and sometimes with a profusion of spoil which he soon contrived to lose again. Most women would have tired of these fruitless quests, but Mrs. Bundy's faith in her husband never faltered, and all the strange caprices of his fortune did not disconcert her. When her adventurer returned with bags of gold, she at once rose to the occasion, moved into a larger house, rode in her carriage for a few weeks, and thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine while it lasted. When the luck failed, she went back contentedly to the cheapest house she could find, used up her fine gowns in household service, and waited hopefully for the return of Bundy. He always came back, though more than once he had been away a whole year; and his return was sometimes dramatic--as, for instance, when he appeared at midnight, and flung a diamond necklace round her throat, while she hid in her pocket a county-court summons for a year's milk bills which she could not pay.