rom lost time. And so I hated that man tenfold.

Good Mrs. Hockin lamented his absence not only for the sake of her
darling fowls, but also because she considered him a check upon the
Major's enterprise. Great as her faith was in her husband's ability and
keenness, she was often visited with dark misgivings about such heavy
outlay. Of economy (as she often said) she certainly ought to know
something, having had to practice it as strictly as any body in the
kingdom, from an age she could hardly remember. But as for what was now
brought forward as a great discovery--economy in politics--Mrs. Hockin
had tried to follow great opinions, but could only find, so far,
downright extravagance. Supply (as she had observed fifty times with her
own butcher and fishmonger), instead of creating demand, produced a
lot of people hankering round the corner, till the price came down to
nothing. And if it were so with their institutions--as her dear husband
called his new public-house--who was to find all the interest due to
the building and land societies? Truly she felt that Sir Rufus Hockin,
instead of doing any good to them, had behaved very badly in leaving
them land, and not even a shilling to work it with.

It relieved her much to tell me this, once for all and in strict
confidence; because her fine old-fashioned (and we now may say quite
obsolete) idea of duty toward her husband forbade her ever to say to
him, or about him, when it could be helped, any thing he might not like,
any thing which to an evil mind might convey a desire on her part to
meddle with--with--

"Political economy," I said; and she laughed, and said, Yes, that was
just it. The Major of course knew best, and she ought with all her
heart to trust him not to burden their old days with debt, after all the
children they had brought up and fairly educated upon the professional
income of a distinguished British officer, who is not intended by his
superiors to provide successors.

"Perhaps it is like the boiled eggs they send me," the old lady said,
with her soft sweet smile, "for my poor hens to sit upon. Their race is
too good to be made common. So now they get tinkers' and tailors' boys,
after much competition, and the crammed sons of cooks. And in peace-time
they do just as well."

Of such things I knew nothing; but she seemed to speak with bitterness,
the last thing to be found in all her nature, yet discoverable--as all
bad things (except its own) are--by the