chambers, opposite each other, with
dressing-room, and bath-room, and alcove for bed attached, and the whole
fitted up elegantly. These rooms were usually given to the most honored
guests, those who rejoiced in titles, and on the occasions of her former
visits at Penrhyn, Lady Jane had occupied one, and her bosom friend, old
Lady Oakley, the other. But this time there was a change, and when Lady
Oakley arrived with her maid, and her poodle dog, and her ear trumpet,
for she was very deaf, she was assigned a room in one of the wings, her
hostess telling her apologetically that she had thought it well to put
the McPhersons together as they would thus get on better, and she was so
anxious for Lady Jane to like Mrs. Archie, the sweetest, most amiable of
women. Lady Oakley, who knew that every apartment at Penrhyn was like a
palace, cared little where she was put, and settled herself in her
quarters the evening before the London McPhersons were expected, Daisy
had been there a week or more, for she was prompt to the day. Their
funds were very low; they were owing seven pounds for lodgings in
London, besides various bills to the green-grocer, the dry-grocer, the
milkman, and the baker, and had barely enough to pay for their
second-class tickets from London..

"I don't know what we are going to do," Archie said, when alone with his
wife in the beautiful room over which Daisy had gone into ecstasies,
exclaiming, as she seated herself in a luxurious easy-chair:

"Why, Archie, we are housed like princes! We have never been in a place
like this. I wish we were to stay longer than a month. I mean to manage
somehow for an extension."

A low growl was the only sound from Archie, who was busy brushing off
the dust gathered on the journey.

"Say, isn't it nice?" she continued, and then coming into the room and
wiping his face with the towel as he came, Archie replied:

"Nice enough, yes; but I don't know what we are going to do when we have
to leave here, I tell you, it makes a chap feel mighty mean not to have
a shilling in his pocket, and that's just my case. How much have you?"

"Twenty shillings," was Daisy's reply. "But never mind; trust me to
fill the purse somehow. I have an idea; so, don't look so glum, and let
us enjoy the present."

"But I can't," Archie replied; "I cannot enjoy myself, feeling all the
time that we are living upon other people, and accepting invitations we
never can return. In short, we are nothing but