"
But she had to manage without her all the same, for in the cold biting
weather after Christmas, the old governess fell ill and kept to her room.
"It is most provoking," said the Baroness, as her guests sat round the
fire on one of the last evenings of the dying year; "all the time that
she has been with us I cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill,
too ill to go about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the
house full, and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and breaks
down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so withered and
shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the same."
"Most annoying," agreed the banker's wife, sympathetically; "it is the
intense cold, I expect, it breaks the old people up. It has been
unusually cold this year."
"The frost is the sharpest that has been known in December for many
years," said the Baron.
"And, of course, she is quite old," said the Baroness; "I wish I had
given her notice some weeks ago, then she would have left before this
happened to her. Why, Wappi, what is the matter with you?"
The small, woolly lapdog had leapt suddenly down from its cushion and
crept shivering under the sofa.
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