l want some dinner."

"I gave him a filleted sole with white sauce, and a custard pudding, at
two o'clock, and he said he wanted nothing more. I had no end of trouble
in getting half a crown out of him, and he had the change. If the
gentleman as I saw with your mar, miss, hadn't given me five shillings,
I don't know where I should be."

"I will ask my uncle what he would like for dinner or supper, and come
to you in the kitchen afterward."

Such was Katherine's inauguration.

She soon found ample occupation. Not a day passed without a battle over
pennies and half-pennies. Liddell gave her each morning a small sum
wherewith to go to market; he expected her to return straight to him and
account rigidly for every farthing she had laid out, to enter all in a
book which he kept, and to give him the exact change. These early
expeditions into the fresh air among the busy, friendly shopkeepers soon
came to be the best bit of Katherine's day, and most useful in keeping
up the healthy tone of her mind. Then came a spell of reading from the
_Times_ and other papers. Every word connected with the funds and money
matters generally, even such morsels of politics as effected the pulse
of finance, was eagerly listened to; of other topics Mr. Liddell did not
care to hear. A few letters to solicitor or stock-broker, some entries
in a general account-book, and the forenoon was gone. Friends,
interests, regard for life in any of its various aspects, all were
nonexistent for Liddell. Money was his only thought, his sole
aspiration--to accumulate, for no object. This miserliness had grown
upon him since he had lost both wife and son. Fortunately for Katherine,
his ideas of expenditure had been fixed by the comparatively liberal
standard of his late cook. When, therefore, he found he had greater
comfort at slightly less cost he was satisfied.

But his satisfaction did not prompt him to express it. His nearest
approach to approval was not finding fault.

In vain Katherine endeavored to interest him in some of the subjects
treated of in the papers. He was deaf to every topic that did not bear
on his self-interest.

"There is a curious account here of the state of labor in Manchester and
Birmingham; shall I read it to you?" asked Katherine, one morning, after
she had toiled through the share list and city article. She had been
about a fortnight installed in her uncle's house.

"No!" he returned; "what is labor to me? We have each our ow