"Primrose seems very unhappy about it," replied Noel. "She may in the end consent to some scheme for perfecting her education, but I'm quite sure she will not go, nor allow her sisters to go to Shortlands to live a life of simple luxury. I am sorry for you, Mrs. Ellsworthy, but I know Primrose will never consent to that." "I don't think you are sorry for me, Arthur," answered the pretty little lady. "In your heart of hearts you quite agree with that naughty, bad Primrose. You had rather the girls lived in their attic, and encountered another dreadful Mr. Dove, and fell into the hands of another designing publisher, than have them safe and happy at Shortlands. Oh, it is a plot between you all to deprive me of my great pleasure. Oh, why will girls, and young men, too, be so perverse?" Noel smiled. "I am sorry for both you and Primrose," he said. "I am convinced she will never agree to your present scheme, although she may allow you to help her to perfect her education." CHAPTER LIII. TELEGRAPH WIRES. Daisy was quite right when she said that Hannah was not subject to nervous attacks. Hannah scorned nerves, and did not believe in them. When she was told that the human body was as full of nerves as an electric battery was full of electricity, that nerves, in short, were like numberless telegraphic-wires, prevailing the whole human frame, she stared at the speakers, and pronounced them slightly daft. Yet Hannah went out of her own little sitting-room on that summer afternoon with, as she expressed it, trembling sensations running down her back, and causing her fingers to shake when she handled her cups and saucers. "Dear, dear," she said to herself, "one would think I had some of those awful telegrams in me which Miss Primrose said was the nervous system. Why, I'm all upset from top to toe. I never had a good view of him before, for I didn't pay no heed to nobody when my dear little Miss Daisy was so ill; but I do say that the cut of the hand and the turn of the head is as like--as like as two peas. Now I do wonder--no, no, it can't be. Well, anyhow, my name ain't Hannah Martin if I don't find out where he comes from, and who he really is. Well, well, well--why this trembling won't leave me, and I don't dare go back into the room. I suppose I have got a few telegraphs, and I mustn't never laugh at poor little Miss Daisy again when she says she's nervous." Hannah sat and rested for about half an hour--then she drank off a glass of cold water--then she washed her face and hands--then she said aloud that the telegrams should not get the better of her, and then she prepared as nice a little dinner as she could for Noel and the two sisters. That evening, after Daisy was in bed, she came into the room where Primrose was quietly reading.