“It’s close upon seven years since my poor dear husband died,” Mrs. Burfield began; and for some little time Francis Tredethlyn was afraid that she was going to favour him with a sketch of her own personal history rather than that story which he was so eager to know. “It’s close upon seven years, seven years of toil and trouble for me, and up to that time I’d never known what it was to want for anything in a moderate way. He was managing clerk in an insurance office, sir, and was as fine a looking man as you need wish to see; but he was taken--sudden--and I was left alone to provide for four young children. Well, sir, I tried one thing and another, but being genteelly brought up, things seemed to go harder with me than they go with some people; and at last an uncle, on my mother’s side, who is very wealthy, and lately retired from the patent chimney-pot business, gave me enough to buy a little furniture and start fresh down here. It’s been a hard life, sir, but I shouldn’t have so much minded that if it hadn’t been for the children. I couldn’t bear to see them running wild upon the shore, or playing with vulgar, dirty children on the waste ground; so, a little better than four years ago, I thought I’d try if I couldn’t get a person to take care of them, who’d be a kind of governess to them, and would give me a helping hand with the house when my lodgings were full, and wouldn’t want above a few pounds a year, just to get herself a new gown once in a way, and so on. Well, sir, I inquired for such a person, but lor’! you might just as well inquire for anything you wanted on Robinson Crusoe’s island as at Coltonslough, unless it’s queen’s-taxes and poor-rates; and you can have plenty of them without asking. So at last someone says to me--I think it was Mr. Sanders at the post-office--‘Why don’t you advertise in the “Times,” Mrs. Burfield? it’ll cost you a trifle, but you are sure to get what you want.’ So the long and the short of it was, I did advertise for a genteel person who would undertake to teach young children, and make herself generally useful, in consideration of a comfortable home and a honorarium of ten pounds per annum. Mr. Sanders advised me to put it in the light of a honorarium, as he said it looked more that way. A young person from the country preferred, I stated in the advertisement; for _the things_ that lodgers from London bring down with their luggage, and then turn round upon you and object to the bedding, had quite set me against Londoners. Well, sir, I got a good many answers, but the best-written letter was signed Susan Turner. So I wrote to Miss Turner--the address was at a little coffee-house near the Great Western terminus--and I told her that if she liked to come down to Coltonslough for an interview, I would be her expenses one way. Well, she came, and I found her a very pleasant-spoken, respectable-looking young person, and I took to her at first sight to that degree that I allowed her to come to me without