Miss Taggart was the daughter of a country doctor. Both her parents were dead, and she was poor. She had a reputation for being enlightened, as she was not regular in her attendance at public worship on Sunday, and did not always go to the same church. She told Mrs. Poulter once that science should tincture theology, whereupon, appeal being made to Mr. Goacher by that alarmed lady, he ventured to remark, that with all respect to Miss Taggart, such observations were perhaps liable to misconstruction in ordinary society, where they could not be fully explained, and, although she was doubtless right in a way, the statement needed qualification. Miss Taggart was not very friendly with Mrs. Poulter and Mr. Goacher, and despised Mrs. Mudge because she was low-bred. Miss Everard Miss Taggart dreaded, and accused her of being vicious and spiteful. It was still early in December, but the lodgers in Russell House who had nothing to do—that is to say all of them excepting Miss Everard—were making plans for Christmas. They always thought a long time beforehand of what was going to happen. On Tuesday morning they began to anticipate Sunday, and when the Sunday afternoon wore away slowly and drearily, they looked forward to the excitement of omnibuses and butchers’ carts on Monday. A little more than a fortnight before Christmas, on Sunday at early dinner, a leg of mutton was provided. Mrs. Poulter always sat at the head of the table and carved. This was the position she occupied when Mr. Goacher came, and she did not offer to resign it. Mrs. Mudge was helped first, but it was towards the knuckle and she had no fat. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Poulter, but will you please give me a piece of fat?’ Mrs. Poulter, scowling, placed a minute portion of hard, half-burnt skin on Mrs. Mudge’s plate. ‘Much obliged, Mrs. Poulter, but I want a piece of _fat_—white fat—just there,’ pointing to it with her fork. Mrs. Poulter, as we have said, was at enmity with Mrs. Mudge. Mrs. Mudge also was Low Church; and Mrs. Poulter was High. She had just returned from a High Church service at St. Paul’s, and the demand for an undue share of fat was particularly irritating. ‘Really, Mrs. Mudge, you forget that there is hardly enough to go round. For my part, though, I care nothing about it.’ ‘If I had thought you did, Mrs. Poulter, I am sure I should not have dared to ask for it.’ ‘I believe,’ said Miss Taggart, ‘that the office of fat in diet is to preserve heat.’ ‘If fat promotes heat,’ said Miss Everard, ‘and I have no doubt it is so, considering Miss Taggart’s physiological knowledge, my advice is that we abstain from it.’