Suppose a railway company, having completed all their arrangements and got everything into working order, were to be suddenly informed that the Government had decided to run a picture palace in the middle of their head office! I thought of this, and decided that the difficulties of such a situation would be a mere _Tit-Bits_ problem compared to my task of fitting in a nursery amongst Ruth, Clara, and Mullins. I awoke regularly at three in the morning, to find my brain already up and about, sorting and rejecting answers to such questions as these: “Who is to wash the kitchen tea-things while Clara is amusing the baby when some one calls on nurse’s day out?” or “What about methylated spirits for boiling in the nursery? One cannot be always running to and fro from the kitchen.” All day long I was pursued by this ceaseless boiling. “What about boiling the milk?” “The milk has boiled over.” “How shall we manage about boiling the clothes?” “I couldn’t get the water to boil.” “You couldn’t boil vegetables in that pan.” “It has to be brought to the boil before you can do anything.” “Boiled beef would come less in the long run.” When Ruth made this statement I suggested that beef could hardly come less than Jones’s mutton did, as that always made a point of never coming at all whenever it could, and if there was going to be a longer run than usual before we got it we had better order something else at once. She replied that in that case a nice piece of boiled fish would be as nice as anything, at which, being a little over-wrought, I wept, and Ruth was extremely kind, and said she would just pop the kettle on to boil. And all this time Tom lay like a log and did nothing. I was dependent upon him for everything. My engagements and my peace of mind hung upon how he felt, and what his Dr. Boswell of a nurse alleged that he thought. The first thing he did was to put an end to my letter-writing, the second was to break up my quiet evenings with games, his third enterprise, his masterpiece of iniquity, was to affiance Ruth to Mullins. At first I had been dense enough not to trace his hand in this calamity, but by and by it dawned upon me, and I questioned Ruth. “Yes, m’m,” she replied, “things is not the same where there is children. You don’t seem to have the place to yourself in the same way as where there is only a lady.” “I beg your pardon, Ruth,” I interrupted, “I didn’t quite catch what you said just then. Did you mean that master Tom takes too much upon himself? I don’t leave much to him, really.” “Oh, no, m’m,” said Ruth, “not at all. It wasn’t that. But where there is children there is so much that has _got_ to be done.” “Yes,” I said thoughtfully, “I see your point. The same thing has occurred to me. He gives orders, doesn’t he? Is rather emphatic--is that what you meant?”