She thought she was wiser, now, than her man of business, who was not such a good man of business by this time, as he used to be — I am alluding to your father, Agnes — and she took it into her head to lay it out for herself. So she took her pigs,’ said my aunt, ‘to a foreign market; and a very bad market it turned out to be.

First, she lost in the mining way, and then she lost in the diving way — fishing up treasure, or some such Tom Tiddler nonsense,’ explained my aunt, rubbing her nose; ‘and then she lost in the mining way again, and, last of all, to set the thing entirely to rights, she lost in the banking way. I don’t know what the Bank shares were worth for a little while,’ said my aunt; ‘cent per cent was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was at