CHAPTER XXXI.
HOW IT CAME ABOUT.
"I Wonder now," said Mrs. Saltren to herself, "whatever has made the raspberry jam so mouldy? Was the fruit wet when it was picked? I cannot remember. If it was, it weren't my fault, but the weather on which no one can depend. I wanted to send up some to Tryphœna Welsh, but now I can't, unless I spoon off the mould on the top of one and fill up from the bottom of another. It is a pity and a waste of confidence and a sapping of faith when one goes, makes jams, and spends coals and sugar and a lot of perspiration, and gets nothing for it but mould an inch thick. I must send Tryphœna Welsh something, for if Giles, as he tells me, has gone to take up with writing for the papers, he'll need the help of James, and there's no way of getting at men's hearts but through their stomachs. It was tiresome Giles writing to my brother and not saying a word to me about it. I could have told him James was not in town, so no need for him to address a letter to him at Shepherd's Bush; he went, after seeing us, to stay with one literary friend and then another, so he won't have Giles' letter till he returns to town. That accounts for my boy receiving no answer. Giles never saw him when he was here, which was tiresome. It is vexing too about the hams. I'd have sent one up to James, if they had not been spoiled, along of the knuckles being outside the bags, so that the flies walked in as they might at a house door. I pickled those hams in
