“You sit just here,” she said, pushing the old lady into the only arm-chair which the little room contained. “After you have had a good breakfast you shall lie down for a bit. There’s a great deal to be done, and I have much to tell you.” “Well, tell it and be quick, Clara. You always were a queer one, and you look changed—you’ve got so smart. Why are you wearing that pretty dress? I thought you always wore your nurse’s livery.” “I am not going to be a nurse any more, mother.” “A mercy me!” said the old lady, throwing up her hands. “And after all the expense of having you eddicated, and you one of the Nightingale nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital and all. They think a sight of you in the old place. Wherever I go the folks is always asking me how Sister Clara is getting on, and I tell you I’m just as proud as Punch of you. I say you nurse all the dukes in London, and that you’re took up wonderful by the Royal Family. They believes it—some folks will believe anything. And now you’re going to give it all up. You’re not going into domestic service again, are you?” “After a fashion, I am, mother; but there, don’t talk so much. Drink your warm coffee. I’ll have a nice rasher of bacon and an egg done for you in a jiffy.” “I can’t abear them cooking eggs,” said the old lady. “I’ll have a bit of bacon if you do it crisp and tasty. I traveled up without any fret or worry, and slept the whole of the way. What a queer, extravagant thing you was to say I might come first class. Not me! I traveled third. I’d like to see myself first. It wouldn’t seem respectful to the quality.” Clara did not reply. She knew her mother’s ways. “There’s no necessity to be so very close about money now,” she said, after a long pause. “I’m doing well and I want you to have all comforts.” “You’re doing well when you give up your profession? It looks like it. Are you gwine to be married?” “Well, that’s about it, mother. You’ve hit the nail on the head now. I am. “Tell me all about it, Clara,” said the old lady. “I love to hear a right good rattling love story. Is it to the grocer, or the fishmonger, or the baker? I always said you’d do well in a shop. You’re the sort to draw customers, though you are plain, to be sure. Your freckles seem to have spread. Can’t you get a lotion to take ’em off? They’re not at all becoming.” “Dear me, mother, don’t mind about my freckles now. I was born with them, and they must stay on my face!” “That they must, Clara, and it’s wrong for me to grumble, but I did fret about them freckles when you was a little tot. Dear heart! I used to dream of ’em at nights. I used to say, they’ll come between her and matrimony—such a plague of ’em as you had—but now it seems I was all wrong. Maybe freckles have come into fashion. Who’s the lucky man, Clara?” “He’s not the baker, nor the grocer, nor the fishmonger,” said Clara quietly. “Here, mother, eat your bacon. I’ll tell you everything afterwards.”