“Yes, the little boys are old enough for school, and the Colonel is going to take a house at Shrewsbury, where his mother will live with them, and want me no longer.” “You have been there seven years.” “Yes, and very happy. When Fanny married, Lady Milsom was left alone, and would not part with me, and then came the two little boys from India, so that she had an excuse for retaining me; but that is over now, or will be in a few weeks time. I had been trying for an engagement, and finding that beside your high-school diploma young ladies I am considered quite passée—” “My dear! With your art, and music, and all!” “Too true! And while I was digesting a polite hint that my terms were too high, and therewith Agatha’s earnest appeal to be sent to Girton, there comes this inheritance! Taking my burthen off my back, and making me ready to throw up my heels like a young colt.” “Ah! you will be taking another burthen, perhaps.” “No doubt, I suppose so, but let me find it out by degrees. I can only think as yet of having my dear girls to myself, _moi_, as the French would say, after having seen so little of them.” “It has been very unfortunate. Epidemics have been strangely inconvenient.” “Yes. First there was whooping cough here to destroy the summer holidays; then came the Milsoms’ measles, and I could not go and carry infection. Oh! and then Freddy broke his leg, and his grandmother was too nervous to be left with him. And by and by some one told her the scarlatina was in the town.” “It really was, you know.” “Any way, it would have been sheer selfish inhumanity to leave her, and then she had a real illness, which frightened us all very much. Next came influenza to every one. And these last holidays! What should the newly-come little one from India do, but catch a fever in the Red Sea, and I had to keep guard over the brothers at Weymouth till she was reported safe, and I don’t believe it was infectious after all! Still, I am tired of ‘other people’s stairs.’” “It is nearly five years since you have been with them, except for that one peep you took at Weston.” “And that is a great deal at their age. Agatha was a vehement reader; she would hardly look at me, so absorbed was she in ‘The York and Lancaster Rose’ which I had brought her.” “She is rather like that now. I conclude that you will wish to take them away?” “Not this time, at any rate till the house is fit to put over their heads. Besides, you have so mothered them, dear Sophy, that I could not bear to make a sudden parting.” “There will be pain, especially over little Thekla and Polly. But if George comes home this spring, and I go out to Queensland with him, perhaps I should have asked you to take this house off my hands. May be it would be prudent in you to do so even now, considering all things; only I believe that transplanting would be good for them all.” “I am glad you think so, for I have a perfect longing for that little house of my own.”