apsed into her great
poem.

"No, my dear," said the countess, when she had completed her work.
"There isn't anything for you to do. I hope you haven't come here
with that mistaken idea. There won't be any sort of work of any kind
expected from you. I poke my own fires, and I carve my own bit of
mutton. And I haven't got a nasty little dog to be washed. And I
don't care twopence about worsted work. I have a maid to darn my
stockings, and because she has to work, I pay her wages. I don't like
being alone, so I get you to come and live with me. I breakfast at
nine, and if you don't manage to be down by that time, I shall be
cross."

"I'm always up long before that."

"There's lunch at two,--just bread and butter and cheese, and perhaps
a bit of cold meat. There's dinner at seven;--and very bad it is,
because they don't have any good meat in London. Down in Fifeshire
the meat's a deal better than it is here, only I never go there now.
At half-past ten I go to bed. It's a pity you're so young, because
I don't know what you'll do about going out. Perhaps, as you ain't
pretty, it won't signify."

"Not at all, I should think," said Lucy.

"Perhaps you consider yourself pretty. It's all altered now since
I was young. Girls make monsters of themselves, and I'm told the
men like it;--going about with unclean, frowsy structures on their
heads, enough to make a dog sick. They used to be clean and sweet and
nice,--what one would like to kiss. How a man can like to kiss a face
with a dirty horse's tail all whizzing about it, is what I can't at
all understand. I don't think they do like it, but they have to do
it."

"I haven't even a pony's tail," said Lucy.

"They do like to kiss you, I daresay."

"No, they don't," ejaculated Lucy, not knowing what answer to make.

"I haven't hardly looked at you, but you didn't seem to me to be a
beauty."

"You're quite right about that, Lady Linlithgow."

"I hate beauties. My niece, Lizzie Eustace, is a beauty; and I think
that, of all the heartless creatures in the world, she is the most
heartless."

"I know Lady Eustace very well."

"Of course you do. She was a Greystock, and you know the Greystocks.
And she was down staying with old Lady Fawn at Richmond. I should
think old Lady Fawn had a time with her;--hadn't she?"

"It didn't go off very well."

"Lizzie would be too much for the Fawns, I should think. She was too
much for me, I know. She's about as bad as anybody ever wa