'Not much, I should guess. Poor Ward did as we are all tempted to do when money goes through our hands, and spent more freely than I was ever allowed to do. Costly house, garden, greenhouses--he'd better have stuck to old Axworthy's place in Minster Street--daughter at that grand school, where she cost more than the whole half-dozen of you put together.' 'She was more worth it,' said Ethel; 'her music and drawing are first-rate. Harry was frantic about her singing last time he was at home--one evening when Mrs. Anderson abused his good-nature and got him to a tea-party--I began to be afraid of the consequences.' 'Pish!' said the Doctor. 'And really they kept her there to enable her to educate her sisters,' said Ethel. 'The last time I called on poor Mrs. Ward, she told me all about it, apologizing in the pretty way mothers do, saying she was looking forward to Averil's coming home, but that while she profited so much, they felt it due to her to give her every advantage; and did not I think--with my experience--that it was all so much for the little ones' benefit? I assured her, from my personal experience, that ignorance is a terrible thing in governessing one's sisters. Poor thing! And Averil had only come home this very Easter.' 'And with everything to learn, in such a scene as that! The first day, when only the boys were ill, there sat the girl, dabbling with her water-colours, and her petticoats reaching half across the room, looking like a milliner's doll, and neither she nor her poor mother dreaming of her doing a useful matter.' 'Who is spiteful now, papa? That's all envy at not having such an accomplished daughter. When she came out in time of need so grandly, and showed all a woman's instinct--' 'Woman's nonsense! Instinct is for irrational brutes, and the more you cultivate a woman, the less she has of it, unless you work up her practical common sense too.' 'Some one said she made a wonderful nurse.' 'Wonderful? Perhaps so, considering her opportunities, and she does better with Spencer than with me; I may have called her to order impatiently, for she is nervous with me, loses her head, and knocks everything down with her petticoats. Then--not a word to any one, Ethel--but imagine her perfect blindness to her poor mother's state all yesterday, and last night, not even calling Burdon to look at her; why, those ten hours may have made all the difference!' 'Poor thing, how is she getting on now?' 'Concentrated upon Leonard, too much stunned to admit another idea--no tears--hardly full comprehension. One can't take her away, and she can't bear not to do everything, and yet one can't trust her any more than a child.' 'As she is,' said Ethel, 'but as she won't be any longer. And the two little ones?'