"Now I do hope and pray, Evelyn, that you are not going to argue with me," cried Aunt Emmeline, with a sudden access of energy which was positively startling. "It's ridiculous saying that because there is only one mistress instead of two, expense will therefore be halved. I have kept house for thirty-three years, and have never once allowed an order at the door, so I may be supposed to know. Nonsense! The rent is the same, I suppose, and the rates, and the taxes. You must sit down to a decent meal even if you are alone, and it takes the same fire to cook four potatoes as eight. Your garden must be kept going, and if you do away with one horse, you still require a groom, I suppose, to look after the rest. Don't talk to me of economising; you'd be up to your neck in debt before a year was over--if you weren't in a lunatic asylum with nervous depression, living alone in that hole-in-a-corner old house, with not a soul but servants to speak to from morning till night. You have a nervous temperament, Evelyn. You may not realise it, but I remember as a child how you used to fidget and dash about. Dear Kathie sat still and sucked her thumb. I said at the time, `Evelyn is better-looking, but mark my words, Kathie will be married first!' And you see! It's because I love you, my dear, and you are my dear sister's child that I warn you to beware of living alone in that house!" "Thank you so much," I said nastily. (When people presage a remark by saying that they only say it because they love you, you may lay long odds that it's going to be disagreeable!) "It certainly sounds a gruesome prospect. Not even a choice between bankruptcy and mania, but a certainty of _both_! And within a year, too! Such a short run for one's money! Aunt Eliza had some suggestion to make, then? And you evidently approved. Would you mind telling me exactly what it was?"