will see the duty, as well as the pleasure,
of ordering her husband's house in a becoming manner. Why should
empty-headed girls, who haven't a word to say for themselves, nor an
accomplishment to their back--why should they be the superlative
concocters of custards, and menders of shirts and stockings? Do you mean
to tell me that a woman must be a fool to have a light hand at pastry? I
believe these libels on clever women have been propagated by designing
mothers who had stupid daughters on their hands. Whenever you see a
heavy-eyed, lumpish girl, who hides herself in corners, and reddens to
the very roots of the hair when you say a civil thing to her, you are
sure to be told that she is the very best house-keeper in the world, and
will make a better wife than her pretty sister. In future I shall treat
all such excuses for ugliness and dulness as they deserve. For I say it
boldly beforehand, ere Carrie has tried her first undercrust, she will
be a pattern housewife--although she reads John Stuart Mill.

"'Tom, darling!' sounds from the next room, and the music goes to my
soul. Good-bye. The next from Aready Cottage. Thine,

"TOM FLOWERDEW.

"P.S.--We met yesterday a most charming travelling companion; and
although, as I think I hinted in my last, I and Carrie intend to suffice
for each other, he had so vast a fund of happy anecdote, we could not
find it in our hearts to snub him. Besides, he began by lending me the
day's _Galignani_."

"That travelling companion," remarked shrewd Mr. Mac, "marks the
beginning of the end of the honeymoon. I shall keep him dark when I dine
with Papa Cockayne on Sunday."

CHAPTER XVI.

GATHERING A FEW THREADS.

Is there a more melancholy place than the street in which you have
lived; than the house, now curtainless and weather-stained, you knew
prim, and full of happy human creatures; than the "banquet-hall
deserted:" than the empty chair; than the bed where Death found the
friend you loved?

The Rue Millevoye is all this to me. I avoid it. If any cabman wants to
make a short cut that way I stop him. Mrs. Rowe rests at last, in the
same churchyard with the Whytes of Battersea: her faults forgiven; that
dark story which troubled all her afterlife and made her son the terror
of every hour, ended and forgotten.

If hers was a sad life, even cheered by the consolations of Mr. Mohun
given over refreshing rounds of buttered toa