subject; and, going to the window, pointed out
the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to me to rest
with curious indifference.
    »You know Mr. Gusher?« said our visitor.
    We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher's
acquaintance.
    »The loss is yours, I assure you,« said Mrs. Pardiggle, with her commanding
deportment. »He is a very fervid impassioned speaker - full of fire! Stationed
in a waggon on this lawn, now, which, from the shape of the land, is naturally
adapted to a public meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could
mention for hours and hours! By this time, young ladies,« said Mrs. Pardiggle,
moving back to her chair, and overturning, as if by invisible agency, a little
round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket on it, »by this time
you have found me out, I dare say?«
    This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in perfect
dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness, after what I had been
thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour of my cheeks.
    »Found out, I mean,« said Mrs. Pardiggle, »the prominent point in my
character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable immediately.
I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely admit, I am a woman of
business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am
so accustomed and inured to hard work that I don't know what fatigue is.«
    We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying; or something
to that effect. I don't think we knew what it was either, but this is what our
politeness expressed.
    »I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if you try!«
said Mrs. Pardiggle. »The quantity of exertion (which is no exertion to me), the
amount of business (which I regard as nothing), that I go through, sometimes
astonishes myself. I have seen my young family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn
out with witnessing it, when I may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!«
    If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had
already looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he doubled his
right fist