"Method, my dear--method! They won't take the trouble to measure the ingredients, but just trust to chance, so what can you expect? You shall have the recipe with pleasure, but if you take my advice you will look after the weighing yourself. Are you expecting any friends for the day, or perhaps one of your sisters?" "No--we shall be quite alone. My married sister wanted us all to go to Ireland, but the boys cannot spare the time, and I will not leave them." Bridgie sighed, and a shadow passed over her face. "It won't seem like Christmas to have no coming nor going, and Esmeralda and Pixie so far- away. I have been trying to think of a diversion for the boys, but I might spare myself the trouble, for I've no money to pay for it if I had the idea." "Straitness of means is a great curtailer of pleasure," said Miss Munns, gazing solemnly into space over the edge of her spectacles. "In my own family we have had sad experiences of the kind. My great-uncle was in most comfortable circumstances, and kept his own brougham and peach- houses before the failure of the Glasgow Bank. They removed to Syringa Villas after that, and did the washing at home. I shall never forget calling upon Emma the first Tuesday that the clothes were hanging out to dry in the back garden, and finding her in tears, with the blinds drawn down. She had a great deal of family pride, had poor Emma, for her mother belonged to the leading circles in Wolverhampton, and the steam of clothes in the boiler is most depressing unless you have been brought up to it from a child. George died soon after. He never held up his head again, and Emmeline, the daughter, had a very good offer from a corn-broker. She was a fine-looking girl, with black eyes and her poor father's nose. She looked very well in the evening, when she was dressed, and had a colour." "And did she marry the corn-broker?" queried Bridgie eagerly. Sylvia was flushed and frowning, more than half ashamed of the old lady's disclosures, fearful lest they might affect her own importance in the estimation of a friend who had lived in a Castle, and owned a sister who went to Court, and profoundly uninterested in Emmeline and her destiny; but Bridgie was all animation and curiosity, her grey eyes wide with anxiety as to the success of the corn-broker and his suit. Here, indeed, was a listener worth having, and Miss Munns warmed to her task with even more than the usual enjoyment. "My dear, you would hardly believe the time poor Emma had with that girl! She took a fancy to a bank clerk on two hundred a year, and nothing would suit but she must be engaged to him. He gave her a turquoise ring, I remember--a shabby thing that could not have cost more than a sovereign, and Emma was quite mortified when people asked to see it. They were engaged for five years, and she lost all her looks, and he had a bicycling accident, and hurt his right arm so badly that he could not write.