aw nothing incongruous in the
announcement, "Miss Lisle's nurse is at the door."

"Not that I should be at the door," said Nannie; "I never go anywhere
but what I am asked inside and treated as such." Nannie still thinks of
us as children, and will continue to do so, no doubt until she who has
rocked so many babies to sleep shall herself be enfolded in the arms of
Mother Earth--and tenderly bidden to sleep.

Personally I had a leaning toward a flat, so many of my friends told me
of the joys of shutting it up when one goes away, which, by the way, I
find they never, or very rarely, do. But Nannie didn't hold with flats.
It is curious what things people don't hold with. After reading of a
terrible murder in a railway carriage, I cautioned my little housemaid,
who was going home one Sunday, to be careful not to be thrown out of
a window. She replied, "I don't hold with girls who are thrown out of
windows."

Well, Nannie didn't hold with flats. To please me and to show her
open-mindedness, she went with me to look at flats, but there was a
tactless integrity about her criticism. I discovered that she judged of
everything from a nursery point of view; and when I ventured to suggest
that, as there were no children, a nursery was not of very great
importance, she said, "You never can tell." In this instance I felt I
could most distinctly tell, and wondered whether I might too tell Nannie
of something I didn't hold with. But I didn't. I remember once long ago
one of us asking Nannie if any one could have children without being
married, and Nannie answered in a very matter of fact voice, "They can,
dear, but it's better not." Anyhow, she didn't hold with flats. "There's
the porters for one thing," she said. That, of course, settled it, and
we looked at small houses.

"I suppose you will get married one of these days," she said, as we
stood on a doorstep waiting to be let in.

"Perhaps no one will have me," I said.

"Well, they might; people marry you least expect to. Look at Maria
Dewberry; you would never have--"

The door opened, or we will presume so, as my knowledge of Maria's
movements after her surprising marriage is nil.

Looking over houses is not without excitement, and certainly not without
surprises; but I was spared the experience some unknown person had who
came one day to see our house when we all lived in London, but happened
to be away. Having a house in the country, we very often did let the
London hou