"My dear Eliza," I said, "I told you as plainly as possible that it was a matter of taste. You ought not to have left forty-eight at once."

"Oh, I couldn't keep running backwards and forwards leaving a few at a time. I've got something else to do. There's three pair of your socks in the basket waiting to be darned, as it is."

"And, good heavens! That Popworth can't be my Popworth. If he's only married this year, he can't, in the nature of things, have got eleven children. And a house like this can't call on a house like that without a something to justify it."

"That's what I thought."

"Then what on earth did you call for?"

"I didn't. Who said I did?"

I gave a sigh of relief. Later in the evening, when Eliza took a card, notched a bit out of each side, and began winding silk on it, I thought it wiser to say no. . . Read More