dirt she had to spend the afternoon cleaning up. There were times when they almost came to blows, for the temper of both was hot, and more than once I heard Mrs. Burden threaten to call in the police. But the old woman had her uses. She was honesty itself, and could be trusted with no matter what,--from the key of our chambers, when they were left empty, to the care of William Penn, when no other companion could be secured for him; she could be relied upon to pay bills, post letters, fetch parcels; and she was as punctual as Big Ben at Westminster. I do not think she missed a day in all the years she was with me. I became accustomed, too, to seeing her about, and there was the dread--or conviction would be nearer the truth--that if I let her go nobody else in their senses would take her in. Mrs. Burden did not improve with time. She never condescended to borrow qualities that did not belong to her. She grew more unwieldy and larger and floppier, a misfortune she attributed to some mysterious malady which she never named, but gloated over with the pride the poor have in their diseases. And she grew dirtier and more disorderly, continuing to scorn my objection to her opening the front door with the shoe she was blacking still on her hand, or to her bringing me a letter wrapped in an apron grimier than her grimy fingers. Nothing would induce her not to call me "Missis," which displeased me more, if for other reasons, than the "Master" she as invariably bestowed upon J. She bobbed no curtsies. When, on Saturdays, coins passed from my hand to hers, she spat on them before she put them in her pocket, to what purpose I have not to this day divined. Her best friend could not have accused her of any charm of manner, but, being Irish, she escaped the vulgarity bred in the London slums. In fact, I often fancied I caught gleams of what has been called the Celtic Temperament shining through her. She had the warmth of devotion, the exaggeration of loyalty, the power of idealizing, peculiar to her race. She was almost lyrical in her praise of J., who stood highest in her esteem, and "Master good! Master good!" was her constant refrain when she conversed with Augustine in the language fitted for children and rich in gesture, which was her well-meant substitute for French. She saw him glorified, as the poets of her country see their heroes, and in her eyes he loomed a splendid Rothschild. "Master, plenty money, plenty money!" she would assure Augustine, and, holding up her apron by the two corners, and well out from her so as to represent a capacious bag, add, "apron full, full, full!"