I was busy during the days immediately "after the fire." I had to insure our belongings, which, of course, being insured, have never run such a risk again. I had to prepare and pack for a journey to France, now many days overdue, and, what with one thing or another, I neglected the Housekeeper. When at last I was ready to shut up our chambers and start and I called at her rooms, it seemed to me she had visibly shrunk and wilted, though she had preserved enough of the proper spirit to pocket the substantial tip I handed over to her with my keys. She was no less equal to accepting a second when, after a couple of months I returned and could not resist this expression of my sympathy on finding the hall still stained and defaced, the stairs still with their blackened groove, the workmen still going and coming, and her despair at the spectacle blacker than ever. The next day she came up to our chambers. She wore her best black gown and no apron, and from these signs I concluded it was a visit of state. I was right: it was to announce her departure. The house, partially rebuilt and very much patched up, would never be the same. She was too old for hope, and without the courage to pick up the broken bits of her masterpiece and put them together again. She was more ill at ease as visitor than as housekeeper. The conversation languished, although I fancied she had something particular to say, slight as was her success in saying it. We had both been silent for an awkward minute when she blurted out abruptly that she had never neglected her duty, no matter what it might or might not have pleased the tenants to give her. I applauded the sentiment as admirable, and I said good-by; and never once then, and not until several days after she left us, did it dawn upon me that she was waiting to accept graciously the fee it was her right in leaving to expect from me. The fact of my having only just tipped her liberally had nothing to do with it. A housekeeper's departure was an occasion for money to pass from the tenant's hand into hers, and she had too much respect for her duty as housekeeper not to afford me the opportunity of doing mine as tenant. It was absurd, but I was humiliated in my own eyes when I thought of the figure I must cut in hers, and I could only hope she would make allowance for me as an ignorant American. How deep I sunk in her esteem, there was no means of knowing. I do not think she could endure to come to her house as a stranger, for she never returned. Neither did any news of her reach us. I cannot believe she enjoyed the inactive existence with her daughter to which she had retired, and I should be astonished if she bore it long. In losing her house she had lost her interest in life. Her work in the world was done. _The New Housekeeper_ [Illustration: THE SPIRE OF ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS] VII THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER