a counter, and your fifteen-year-old daughter stands at a sink washing other people's dishes? The silence of Mrs. Montrose was explained. There are situations no words are sufficient for, situations which they betray by their very inadequacies.
Twice only did I ever see traces of emotion in Mrs. Montrose's face. Once was when she told me that an English friend coming back from the "Coast" had written in advance to say that he hoped to call upon them in Toronto. There was something in the dark eyes that just for an instant made me think of some frightened, fluttering thing in the woods, some swift, wild thing at bay. But the habitual poise replaced it again and she said nothing more.
Mrs. Montrose at this period no longer officiated as our laundress. She had been replaced by an angular person of Scotch persuasion who washed inordinately well in half the time, but who intimidated us all with her beetling brows, and fierce concentrated gaze that seemed to say "you are a party to life's manifest intention to deal unjustly by me!" The very gaze incriminated you, driving you
