ea, Ethel! The price has
been arranged, I think? My servants will require a comfortable room
to dine in--by themselves, ma'am, if you please. My governess and the
younger children will dine together. My daughter dines with me--and
my little boy's dinner will be ready at two o'clock precisely, if you
please. It is now near one."

"Am I to understand----" interposed Miss Honeyman.

"Oh! I have no doubt we shall understand each other, ma'am," cried Lady
Anne Newcome (whose noble presence the acute reader has no doubt ere
this divined and saluted). "Doctor Goodenough has given me a most
satisfactory account of you--more satisfactory perhaps than--than you
are aware of." Perhaps Lady Anne's sentence was not going to end in a
very satisfactory way for Miss Honeyman; but, awed by a peculiar look of
resolution in the little lady, her lodger of an hour paused in whatever
offensive remark she might have been about to make. "It is as well that
I at last have the pleasure of seeing you, that I may state what I want,
and that we may, as you say, understand each other. Breakfast and tea,
if you please, will be served in the same manner as dinner. And you
will have the kindness to order fresh milk every morning for my little
boy--ass's milk--Doctor Goodenough has ordered ass's milk. Anything
further I want I will communicate through the person who spoke to
you--Kuhn, Mr. Kuhn; and that will do."

A heavy shower of rain was descending at this moment, and little Mrs.
Honeyman looking at her lodger, who had sate down and taken up her book,
said, "Have your ladyship's servants unpacked your trunks?"

"What on earth, madam, have you--has that to do with the question?"

"They will be put to the trouble of packing again, I fear. I cannot
provide--three times five are fifteen--fifteen separate meals for seven
persons--besides those of my own family. If your servants cannot eat
with mine, or in my kitchen, they and their mistress must go elsewhere.
And the sooner the better, madam, the sooner the better!" says Mrs.
Honeyman, trembling with indignation, and sitting down in a chair
spreading her silks.

"Do you know who I am?" asks Lady Anne, rising.

"Perfectly well, madam," says the other. "And had I known, you should
never have come into my house, that's more."

"Madam!" cries the lady, on which the poor little invalid, scared and
nervous, and hungry for his dinner, began to cry from his sofa.

"It will be a pity that the dear littl