"I could not tell them to their faces," said Jane to me that day, "that it wasn't I. I am just a homely body, and can only do the rough homely work; I didn't tell them that it was because I had a lady who had the face of an angel and the ways of a queen in the drawing-room, and a young lady, the princess, her daughter, that the boarding-house prospered. I never let out to them that because you two are real ladies, and know how to be courteous and sympathetic and sweet, and yet to uphold your own dignity through everything, that the place was always full. No, I never told them that. What cheek those Miss Simpsons had to try to pick my brains!"