His better-half was by this time in no mood
to receive Miss Fluke's lecture on the sinfulness
of novel reading, with a good grace. She
made several remarks of a biting and ironical
character, to the effect that she had always
supposed an Englishman's house to be his castle,
wherein he might reasonably expect to be safe
from the harrying of people who had
nothing to do but to mind other people's
business, and pry into other people's affairs; that this
might be styled a religious line of conduct, by
some persons, but that she, for her part, could
find no warrant for it in the instructions she
had received in her youth from pious parents
and guardians, whose orthodoxy she would defy
the most malicious to call in question. She
further added, that she knew a lady when she
saw one, having lived housemaid in good
families before taking up with Hutchins. And she
more than insinuated that she did not see a lady
when she saw Miss Fluke.

All these remarks were pointed and emphasised,
by much clashing and banging of the
dinner-things: which Mrs. Hutchins proceeded
to wash up in a manner so expressive of
indignation, as to put the crockery in considerable
danger of being dashed to pieces.

Then was Miss Fluke a spectacle to be seen,
as standing erect and rigid in the middle of the
kitchen, she launched upon Mrs. Hutchins all
the thunders of her practised eloquence.

Miss Fluke braced herself for the combat with
positive enjoyment. Totally without one sensitive
fibre in her moral composition, and rendered
confident by long habit and by the arsenal of Scripture
texts from which she could draw at will, and which
she flung with pitiless volubility at the head of
her adversary—after the fashion of those modern
cannon which fire off so many balls per minute
—Miss Fluke was a wonderful and overwhelming
spectacle, as she stood there, square and
upright, her face crimson, her eyes staring, and
her head shaking with the energy of her
emphasis.

Mrs. Hutchins had entirely miscalculated her
strength when she ventured to cope with such
an enemy as this. She was thoroughly cowed
and frightened, and proclaimed her complete
discomfiture, by subsiding into a whimpering fit
of tears.

Miss Fluke looked at her triumphantly. " I
will come and talk to you again, Mrs.
Hutchins," said she, seizing Mrs. Hutchins' s reluctant
hand, and shaking it violently. " We must
be instant, you know, in season and out of season.
It would never do for me to look on
quietly and see my fellow-creatures go headlong
to perdition, Mrs. Hutchins."

The way in which Miss Fluke pronounced the
word perdition made Mrs. Hutchins shake in
her shoes.

"I'm sure I should never ha' thought
nothink of reading a novel," sobbed Mrs.
Hutchins.  " I've knowed lots of good people do it,
and think it no sin."

"Ah-h-h! The old Adam, Mrs. Hutchins,
the old Adam!"

"Who, mum?" said Mrs. Hutchins, looking
up forlornly.

The poor woman presented a very woe-begone
appearance by this time, having rubbed her eyes
with a not over-clean apron, and ruffled her
untidy hair until it stood up all over her head like
tangled tow, with one scrubby tress sticking out
behind, at right angles with her comb.

"The sinmlness of our corrupt and fallen
nature," explained Miss Fluke. " You should
read, instead of imbibing that poison" with a
terrible glance at Rosalba " you should read
some of those blessed and improving tracts that
I left with the child Cordelia. Where are they,
Mrs. Hutchins?"

It chanced that Mrs. Hutchins, having been
attracted by the prints in Robinson Crusoe,
had borrowed the book, unknown to Corda,
and brought it down to the kitchen together
with several of the penny tracts, which had been
placed between its pages. She rose meekly to
get the tracts from the dresser on which they
were lying; but Miss Fluke anticipated her,
and seized the volume and the tracts together.

"There!" she said, rapidly enumerating their
titles. " The Reformed Convict. Sally Smith,
the Scullerymaid. The Sinner's Fire Engine.
Have you Taken your own Measure yet? Or
the Complete Spiritual Tailor. There's reading
for you, Mrs. Hutchins!"

Then, opening the volume of Robinson
Crusoe, she examined the name written on the
title-page.

"What's this?" she exclaimed, with the
suddenness which was one of her most marked
peculiarities. ' To Mabel, from her affectionate— '
where did you get this, Mrs. Hutchins?"

"A young lady lent it to little Cordelia the
other day. Mr. Clement Charlewood, he brought
it for her, along with two or three more."

"Oh!" said Miss Fluke, intent on the writing
on the title-page. " Indeed! The child had
far better have read the tracts I left her. I
shall scold my young friend," added Miss Fluke,
with a grim smile.

Then she violently shook hands again with
Mrs. Hutchins, and took her leave, with a
promise to return as speedily as might be, to
cariy on the good work she had begun that
morning. " And," said she to herself, as she
stalked, flushed with victory, down New
Bridge-street, " it's a special providence for all that
household, that Mabel Earnshaw took it into her
head to visit Cordelia. For, otherwise, I might
never have gone there."

The account Mrs. Hutchins gave to the
Trescotts of her interview with Miss Fluke was
inaccurate in several important particulars; but
it sufficed to excite a burning indignation in the
breast of Alfred. The inaccuracies of which I am
obliged to accuse Mrs. Hutchins were mainly the
suppression of her own signal defeat and abject
submission, and an exaggeration of Miss Fluke's
pious horror of the Trescotts' calling in life.
These were not only powerful in their action
upon Alfred, but Mr. Trescott, too, chafed and
fumed, and moved about the kitchen in a state