zest as if we did, we will not
waste time on what was said. Only when Susan had gone, Mrs. Maybury
rose, too, and said, "I must say, Julia, that I think this dreadful
conversation is infinitely worse and more wicked than any game of cards
could be!"

"What are you talking about?" said Julia, jocosely, and quite
good-humored again.

"And the amount of shocking gossip of this description that I've heard
since I've been in your house is already more than I've heard in the
whole course of my life! Dr. Maybury would never allow a word of gossip
in our rooms." And she went to bed.

"You shall never have another word in mine!" said the thunderstricken
Julia to herself. And if she had heard that the North Pole had tipped
all its ice off into space, she wouldn't have told her a syllable about
it all that week.

But in the course of a fortnight, a particularly choice bit of news
having turned up, and the edge of her resentment having worn away, Mrs.
Cairnes could not keep it to herself. And poor Mrs. Maybury, famishing
now for some object of interest, received it so kindly that things
returned to their former footing. Perhaps not quite to their former
footing, for Julia had now a feeling of restraint about her news, and
didn't tell the most piquant, and winked to her visitors if the details
trenched too much on what had better be unspoken. "Not that it was
really so very--so very--but then Mrs. Maybury, you know," she said
afterward. But she had never been accustomed to this restraint, and she
didn't like it.

In fact Mrs. Cairnes found herself under restraints that were amounting
to a mild bondage. She must be at home for meals, of course; she had
been in the habit of being at home or not as she chose, and often of
taking the bite and sup at other houses, which precluded the necessity
of preparing anything at home. She must have the meals to suit another
and very different palate, which was irksome and troublesome. She must
exercise a carefulness concerning her conversation, and that of her
gossips, too, which destroyed both zest and freedom. She strongly
suspected that in her absence the curtains were up and the sun was
allowed to play havoc with her carpets. She was remonstrated with on her
goings and comings, she who had had the largest liberty for two score
years. And then, when the minister came to see her, she never had the
least good of the call, so much of it was absorbed by Mrs. Maybury. And
Mrs. Maybury's healt