The Argosy — page 260: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

246 A Secret of the Sea. it. No; in a comparison of your sex as against ours, it seems to me that there is only one point wherein we fail—only one grand faculty that men possess and that we have no Idea of.” “ And that 1s —— ?” “The faculty of silence. The want of that, and of that alone, has lost us the supremacy of the world.” Jack laughed, and Olive went on with her examination of the books. It had been a debatable point with Lady Dudgeon whether or not she should take her children to London with her ; but Sophy’s earnest pleading not to be left behind had at last won a half-reluctant consent from her ladyship. But there was another reason, of which Sophy knew nothing, why the young ladies should accompany their mamma. The truth was that her ladyship found Miss Deane’s services so useful to her in many ways that she could by no means make up her mind to let Olive stay behind at Stammars. By so doing she would have to take on herself again a number of duties of which Miss Deane had ot Jate relieved her ; and how would it be possible for her to do that, with all the extra demands on her time which a residence in town necessarily implied? If Miss Deane had been useful to her in the country, in London she would be invaluable: so to London Olive and the young ladies were transferred in due course. Lady Dudgeon was one ot those people who delight in keeping an elaborate series of house- keeping books, in which every item of domestic expenditure is carefully tabulated, and against which the tradespeople’s accounts can be minutely checked. During the last few months, however, her ladyship’s eyesight had begun to fail her, whereupon her medical man had threatened her with spectacles unless she would consent to give her eyes a little more rest. The threat fnghtened her. She could not afford to give up her diary ; she could not find in her heart to curtail her correspondence ; she must perforce give up her housekeeping accounts, or delegate the labour connected with them into other hands. When, some three months later, Olive Deane arrived at Stammars, her ladyship’s book-keeping had got terribly into arrear. She was greatly perturbed in her mind thereby, feeling perfectly sure that her tradespeople were all aware that she no longer checked their accounts, and that they were leagued together to overreach her m every possible way. Olive had not been many days at Stammars before she found out what was amiss, whereupon she begged so earnestly that the books and accounts might be put into her hands, that her ladyship, not with- out a considerable degree of reluctance, agreed at last to entrust them to her. And she had never had cause to regret having done so. Everything was done almost—not quite, but almost—as well as she could have done it herself; and her ladyship was not slow to sing the praises of Olive. If there was one thing on which Lady Dudgeon prided herself in ecomniclooolkks _ (CO)