us, and improve my
position, you might, Ursula. I can't afford to fall out with Copperhead,
he is very important to me just at this moment; and perhaps it is better
that I should give in to him at once about the late dinner."

"You may say it is not my business," said Ursula, "but we have already
another maid, and now two dinners--for it is just the same as two
dinners. He will not be any advantage to you like that, and why should
he be so much harder to please than we are? Reginald never grumbled, who
was much better bred and better educated than Mr. Copperhead."

"And with so much money to keep up his dignity," said her father
mockingly. "No, it is not your business, the cookery-book is your
business, and how to make the best of everything; otherwise I don't want
any advice from you."

"What did he say?" cried Janey, rushing in as soon as her father had
left the room. Ursula, a very general consequence of such interviews,
was sitting by the fire, very red and excited, with tears glistening in
her eyes.

"Of course I knew what he would say; he says it is not my business, and
there are to be late dinners, and everything that man chooses to ask
for. Oh, it is so hard to put up with it!" cried Ursula, her eyes
flashing through her tears. "I am to read up the cookery-book and learn
to make _entrees_ for them; but to say we can't afford it is not my
business. I wonder whose business it is? It is I who have to go to the
tradespeople and to bear it all if they grumble; and now this horrible
man, who dares to tell me the coffee is not strong enough, as if I was a
barmaid--"

"Barmaids don't have to do with coffee, have they?" said matter-of-fact
Janey; "but the fact is _he is not a gentleman_; why should you mind?
What does it matter what a person like that says or does? You said so
yourself, he is not a bit a gentleman. I wonder what Cousin Anne and
Cousin Sophy could mean."

"It is not their fault; they think of his mother, who is nice, who sent
those things; but Mr. Copperhead knew about the things, which was not so
nice of her, was it? But never mind, we must try to make the best of it.
Get the cookery-book, Janey; perhaps if you were to read it out loud,
and we were both to try to fix our mind upon it--for something must be
done," said Ursula gravely. "Papa will never find it out till all the
money is spent, but we shall be poorer than we were before we had the
pupil. Who is that, Janey, at the door?"

It was Pho