She was again the prey of an embarrassment against which she tried hard to struggle, because it seemed to smirch the spirit in which she wanted to set out. This constraint prevented her from thanking him except in clumsy conventional phrases. “Now, will you dine with me to-night?” She wanted to refuse even this, but she lacked the courage; in the end she passed a pleasant enough evening, listening to her host expatiate upon the career for which he assured her again and again she was certainly destined. He wanted her to lunch and dine with him on the next day too; but she pleaded the urgency of shopping and packing and her desire to see something of her daughter. “Very well then,” he said, as he put her into a hansom outside Verrey’s where they had dined. “I’ll be at Victoria on Wednesday morning.” Nancy was glad to be jingling back to St. Joseph’s, alone with her dreams in the sharp apple-sweet air of the October night. The next day Mrs. Pottage arrived to say good-bye and help Nancy with her shopping. By now she had long been an institution at St. Joseph’s, where her conversation afforded the most intense delight to the nuns. “Well, when you wrote you was off to Italy I was in two minds if I wouldn’t suggest coming with you. I don’t know what it is, whether I’m getting old or ugly or both, but I’ve not had a single proposal for eighteen months. I suppose it means I’ve got to be thinking of settling down and giving some of the younger ones a chance. Well, take care of yourself in Italy, and don’t eat too much ice-cream. Funny thing, I-talians should eat so much ice-cream and yet be so hot. There was an opera company came to Greenwich once, and the tenor who was an I-talian stayed with me. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘what he’ll want is plenty of macaroni and ice-cream.’ He looked a bit surprised, I’m bound to say, when I give it him for breakfast on the Sunday morning, but I thought he was only surprised at any one knowing his tastes so well. But, will you believe me, when I give it him for dinner again, he used language that was far from I-talian, very far. In fact, I never heard any one swear so fluent in English before or since. It quite dazed me for the moment. But we got on all right as soon as I found he liked good old roast beef. He gave me two passes for the Friday night, and Mrs. Bugbird and me thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The opera was called _Carmen_ and Mrs. B. thought it was going to be all about them, and when she found it was actually the name of a woman she laughed herself silly. Every time this Carmen came on she’d whisper to me, ‘a good pull up,’ and then she’d start off shaking like a jelly. But there, she’s very quick to see the radiculous side of anything, Mrs. Bugbird is. Well, good-bye, dear, and take good care of yourself. You know your old Mrs. Pottage wishes you all the best you can wish for yourself.”