And next day they went and inspected No. 6 in the Terrace. Mr. and Mrs. Ford felt that it was a solemn moment in their career; they had no children, and they liked to be comfortable, but such a piece of grandeur as a house in the Terrace had never come within the range of their hopes; and Mrs. Ford liked the idea of the cook, and the housemaid, and the parlor-maid. Thus the bargain was made; and though the Fords had not found it quite so delightful as it appeared at first, yet the experiment was, on the whole, a successful one. The household got on as well as it was possible for such a composite household to do. Sometimes a maid would be saucy, and give Mrs. Ford to understand as she knew very well who was the real master; and sometimes Mr. Trevor would make himself disagreeable and find fault with the eggs, or complain of the tea. But barring these rufflings of the rose leaves, all went very well with the house. When she was not thinking of her housekeeping, Mrs. Ford kept a convenient little fund of misery on hand, which she could draw upon at the shortest notice, as to the position in which she and her husband would be left when Mr. Trevor died. Mr. Trevor was now seventy, so that the fear was not unnatural, and she was a woman full of anxieties who liked to have one within reach. Ford was above all this; he knew that they were not to be left with the lease of the house in the Terrace, and nothing more to trust to. For he had become Mr. Trevor’s confidant. It is not so touching a relationship as that which exists at the theater between the first and second ladies, the heroine in white satin and the confidante in muslin; but it is doubtful whether Tilburina ever made revelations more exciting than those over which these two old men wagged their beards--or rather their smooth old chins, well shaven every morning; for at their age and in their condition of life beards were still unknown.