After lunch Mrs. Vincent carried the boy off and left us to our chat There were so many things we had yet to say to each other. After I had told all the home news I came back to Freda herself. "Now tell me," I asked, "what a 'nasty place' is like, such as your last 'place'?" I made a wry face over the word, which seeing, Freda laughed. "Well, I'll tell you, dear," she said. "In taking my last place, which was to be for a short time, I thought I'd depart from the beaten path of governessing, which is really a very sad and lonely life. So I answered an advertisement for a lady to act as hostess at a Bayswater boarding-house, to take the head of the table, receive people who came on business, and all that kind of thing. The salary was miserable, but the place sounded an easy one, and there was one great inducement. I could have Jacky to stay with me whenever I liked, and oh, my dear, if you could know the pangs of loneliness I have suffered for want of my boy at times! The thought of a 'place' where Mary could fetch him to me now and again for a few hours was like heaven." "Poor Freda!" "Oh, poor Freda indeed! You shall hear how it turned out. I found the woman a coarse, red-faced, cunning-eyed person, not at all more prepossessing because of her oily smile. I took a dislike to her at once, though she meant to be very amiable. She said that her business was so large that she could no longer carry out all the duties of hostess herself,--she required another 'lydy' to help her. The real truth was that she was conscious of her own deficiencies, and had come to see that she lost clients by receiving them herself. She really did want a lady to coax people to come in." "She must have had common-sense anyhow," said I. "Oh, my dear, she knew well! She wasn't sensitive, even with regard to herself. She told me that my duties would be, besides presiding at table, receiving visitors, &c., to do such small household tasks as a lady would naturally do in her own house. She hoped, she said, that I wouldn't mind doing a little mending." "Well?" "Well, I said I didn't mind anything in reason. Then she took me upstairs and showed me my bedroom. It was the merest attic, but I could see a tree or two from it, and at the foot of my bed there was a little old cot, which clinched the matter for me, for I imagined Jacky in it, and the joy of undressing and dressing him myself, and listening to his soft breathing all night. So I said I'd come, without further ado." "Is it so seldom you have Jacky to yourself, Freda?"