“Now, my dear James,” she said, “I am very sorry for you; of course I am. I know it is very trying, but there is no use in sitting there lamenting. Put up your silk handkerchief and come to the point. We all know it will be the same a hundred years hence, but in the meantime you don't want your dinner put back, so that Sally may continue her flirtations in the slonk,” and Aunt Mary burst into a merry peal of laughter. “You are most unsympathetic, I never knew one so unsympathetic; you were always so, you'll never change.” “Unsympathetic,” said Aunt Mary, shaking with laughter; “how can you say so? I have never done anything all my life but listen to you and sympathise with you. When you were a boy and sold my books to the boys at your school, and when you were a young man and took my poor husband to oyster shops--you remember the stories you used to tell me?” Mr. Brookes waved his handkerchief, and Aunt Hester, who was a spinster, cast down her eyes and fidgeted with some papers which she had taken from her hand-basket. “Of course, if my afflictions are only a subject for laughter--” “I am not laughing at your afflictions, my dear James. I laughed because you said I was not a sympathetic listener. You used to think me so once.” Then becoming instantly serious, Aunt Mary said: “Of course I think this is a matter of great importance--the health, the welfare of my dear nieces, and your happiness.” “And their salvation,” murmured Aunt Hester. “If I did not think it important, do you think I would have left home, and at such a time, when I am most wanted? I always said that that big place would kill me, I never wanted to leave the Poplars; a little place like that is no trouble--my greenhouse, a few servants, and just as I had got everything to look nice--I could do it all in a few hours; but now I am never still, there is always something to be done. No one can take up my work. I am behindhand; oh, I assure you when I go back I shall be afraid to go into the greenhouse. I am worn out, I really am; it never ends. In a big house like Woborn one is always behindhand. The days aren't long enough, that's the fact of it; when one thinks one is getting through one thing one is called away to another. 'Please, mum, the cook would like to speak with you for a moment.' 'There is no tea in the house, mum.' 'What! is all the tea I gave out last week gone?' 'Yes, mum. There was, you remember, the dressmaker here three days, and we had Mrs. Jones in to help. And we shall want another piece of cheese for the servants' hall.' I don't know how it is with you, but at Woborn the cloth is never off the table in the servants' hall. They have five meals a day--breakfast at eight, and they won't eat cold bacon, they must have it hot; of course the waste is something fearful; at eleven they have beer and cheese; at one there is dinner; at five they have tea; and at nine supper. Five meals a day--it really is terrible, it is wicked,