This explanation of an interesting custom is made to forestall the reader’s surprise at learning that two years and a half after her retirement from the stage, and ten years, at least, after the retirement of such of her youthful charms as might have justified the exhibition, the portrait of Mrs. Fortescue, arrayed in silk tights, of a most constricted pattern--not constrained at all, simply constricted--decorated scores of fences in what theatrical people call the “’Quawket Circuit,” which circuit includes the charming and presumably salubrious shades of Tophill. There was no mistaking Mrs. Fortescue’s face; Mrs. Fortescue’s attire might have given rise to almost any sort of mistake. The name under the picture was not that of Mrs. Fortescue; it was that of a much advertised young person whose “dramatic speciality” was entitled “Too Much for London; or, Oh, My! Did you Ever!” * * * * * Now it is necessary to disinter old Mrs. Filley for a moment, and to smirch her character a little by way of introducing some excuse for what Mrs. Fortescue did. [Illustration] By the time Mrs. Fortescue had cooked her third report, she had found out that the old lady had not quite kept faith with her employer. At the Tophill Institute she had represented herself as Mr. Filley’s mother, gaining thereby much consideration and many cups of tea. So that when she died, with the rest of her secret hidden from all but Mrs. Fortescue, the latter lady, having fully made up her mind to appropriate the job, felt that it behooved her to go her predecessor one better, and when she made her appearance at Tophill it was in the character of Mr. Filley’s newly married wife. She told the sympathetic all about it, how Mr. Filley and she had known each other from childhood, how he had always loved her, how she had wedded another to please her family, how the other had died, and Mr. Filley had renewed his addresses, how she had staved him off (I am not quoting her language) until his dear old mother had died, and left him so helpless and lonely that she really had to take pity on him. Mrs. Filley No. 2 got all the consideration she wanted, and the principal sent out for champagne for her, under the impression that that was the daily and hourly drink in all millionaire families. He never found out otherwise from Mrs. Filley, either.