A TEREIBLE DISASTER 41 sufficient for her to live upon. One by one the other ladies gave up hope and returned to England, but Annie stayed on. Misfortune might have befallen the army, but Gregory might have escaped in disguise. She had, like the other ladies, put on mourning for him, for had she declared her belief that he might still be alive she could not have applied for the pension, and this was necessary for the child’s sake. Of one thing she was determined : she would not go with him as beggars to the father who had cast Gregory off, until, as he had said, she received absolute news of his death. She was not in want; but as her pension was a small one, and she felt that it would be well for her to be employed, she asked Lady Hicks, before she left, to mention at the houses of the Egyptian ladies to whom she went to say good-bye, that Mrs. Hilliard would be glad to give lessons in English, French, or music.

The idea pleased them, and she obtained several pupils. Some of these were the ladies themselves, and the lessons generally consisted in sitting for an hour with them two or three times a week and talking to them, the conversation being in short sentences, of which she gave them the English translation, which they repeated over and over again until they knew them by heart. This caused great amusement, and was accompanied by much laughter on the part of the ladies and their attendants. Several of her pupils, howQver, were young boys and girls, and the teaching here was of a more serious kind. The lessons to the boys were given the first thing in the morning, and the pupils were brought to her house by attendants. At eleven o’clock she taught the girls, and returned at one, and had two hours more teaching in the afternoon. She could have obtained more pupils had she wished to, but the pay she received, added to her income, enabled her to live very comfortably and to save up money.

She had a negro servant who was very fond of the boy, and she could leave him in her charge with perfect confidence while she was teaching.

In the latter part of 1884 she ventured to hope that some