Mrs. Brand laughed. “Oh, I expected that,” she said. “It’s the commonest thing in London cooks. Yes, I know it’s very bad, but there are faults in everybody. She did cook well, Luce; I noticed that when I took a little supper with you, and I’ve said to Jem since what a comfort it was to me to know you were getting decent food. I don’t think you should have been so hard on her. What has become of your Christian charity? You might have told her that if it ever happened again, you would give her straight over to the police. That would have pulled her up and kept her in check for a time, and you would have got the good of her in the meantime. It’s too bad not to have had a little patience with a poor sinner. I’m shocked at you.” “My dear Florence,” cried Lucy in dismay, “you think me uncharitable for discharging a servant for drunkenness and I have known you to dismiss one for burning a pudding!” “Oh, that’s quite a different thing,” said Florence easily, “and I don’t know that I should have done that if it had not been that we had visitors, and I was very much put out.” “It would have been all the same to me if I made my sad discovery in the strictest privacy,” observed Lucy, “but as it happened, I made it at my Christmas dinner time.” Florence gave a curious deprecatory smile. “Poor old Miss Latimer and that crippled man!” she exclaimed. “Surely they would not be very severe censors? You could have trusted them not to make much game of your mishap, and I should have thought it was quite in your province to have patience with a sinner and try to reform her.” “It might have been,” returned Lucy, “had Charlie been at home, and had Charlie and I been alone together. But there is a time and a place for everything. No drunkard should be in any house where a child is, and I am left in charge of my husband’s property, and must not expose it to unnecessary risks. We must not do wrong as a beginning of doing good. That is the first step on a very slippery path.” When Lucy got upon principles, Florence was generally silenced, not because she was convinced, but because she could not understand connecting practice with principle. With the latter, Florence never troubled herself. The former she directed by the expediency of the moment. Presently she spoke again, with a change of subject. “You got my note this morning, I suppose, Luce,” she said, “and you know what I’ve come for. Mrs. Bray is quite hurt at not having seen you for so long, and I promised to bring you ‘before the year was out.’ So this is your last chance.” “It has not been my fault,” Lucy observed soberly. “Nor can I go with you this afternoon, Florence, unless Hugh can accompany us.” Florence made a little grimace. “Isn’t this girl respectable either?” she said. “Have you a written character with her too?” “No,” Lucy answered. “But she is a perfect stranger. I cannot leave my child with her.”