"William Tompkins, ma'am."

"Why could you not say so at first," said the mistress, unable to repress a smile; "you mean that you are going to marry Tompkins."

"Yes, ma'am; this day month."

"Well, he bears the best of characters, Elizabeth, and I wish you joy, though I shall be sorry to lose you; you have been with me for years, you have got accustomed to all my ways."

"Yes, ma'am, I have been with you ever since I was sixteen, the same age that my sister is now."

It was not very easy to misunderstand this little hint, and Mrs. Richmond answered, It has not generally been my plan to take a very young girl, Elizabeth."

66

No, ma'am," pleaded Elizabeth, coming nearer to her point; "but Sarah is taller than I was at her age, and I thought as the ladies have been so well pleased with her that perhaps you might consent to try her; the place is very light, and she could easily do the work, if I was here just at first to put her in the way of it."

"Why, you seem to have arranged the whole affair for me," said Mrs. Richmond, unable to repress a smile.

The housemaid blushed yet more deeply, and answered, "Sarah is the only relation I have in the world, ma'am. And William said yesterday that if we got on tolerably well, he would have her out as soon as he could afford to pay her passage."

You are not very worldly-wise to tell me that," said Mrs. Richmond. "I am afraid that in this little plan you have been considering your own benefit solely, and not mine."

"Ma'am?" said Elizabeth, not understanding her.

You wish me to take your young sister, that you may know she is safe and well cared for. Of course you are aware that it will give me some tronble to teach her my ways, and to look after her; but it appears that I am not to have the advantage of

"Why, ma'am," replied the housemaid, speaking more freely than she could have done but for this sudden prospect of marrying, and never after that seeing her mistress and benefactress, "I have been so used to hear you talk of the girls as if it were an advantage to you to do them a charity, that I made up my mind you would try Sarah, just because it was plainly the best thing possible for her."

The housemaid looked as if she could hardly help crying, for she felt that her conduct must appear selfish and neglectful of the interests of one who had always been the best of friends to her. The mistress, on the other hand, felt that a compliment had been paid, which was sweet because it was so unconscious.

TEN minutes after Elizabeth was on her way to the Philanthropic School to fetch her sister, that Mrs. Richmond might speak to her; and the astonished Sarah, a tall, awkward girl, was informed almost in a breath that her sister was going to be married to William Tompkins, and sail with him to New Zealand, and that she herself was sent for to become Mrs. Richmond's housemaid. The consequence was, that when she was brought into the presence of her new mistress she was so bewildered that she scarcely gave an intelligent answer to any question but this,

"If I take you, will you do your best?" "O yes, ma'am; please, ma'am, I will indeed."

But doing one's best at sixteen is not always doing well. Elizabeth declared

"I hope so, ma'am," answered Elizabeth, anxiously; she does not want for sense." "No," replied the mistress, "but she is sadly thoughtless; you must talk to her, Elizabeth, she should be more of a woman at her age."

"Ah," thought Elizabeth, "I wonder what will be thought of Sarah when I am gone, if this is said now that I am here to look after her. I hope, I do hope, she will not be so silly as to lose the place before we can afford to send for her."

"However," continued Mrs. Richmond, "I will give her a fair trial; indeed, I have a motive for wishing to keep her besides kindness to you both. The funds of the school are very much fallen off, and as I shall save four pounds a year in wages by taking so young a girl, I shall let that go towards making up the deficiency."

"Indeed, ma'am!" said Elizabeth, "the funds fallen off! I am sorry, for if ever there was a real good school and splendid charity, it's that one. In short, ma'am, I owe everything to it; William never would have thought of me if I hadn't had a good education.'

Mrs. Richmond smiled. "Yes, Elizabeth, I think after the girls leave us they are aware of the benefit they have received."

"And might I ask," inquired Elizabeth, demurely, "what the ladies decided to do about that legacy from poor Mrs. Kilmer?"

Elizabeth knew pretty well what had been done, but she wished to hear it from one of the ladies for herself. This legacy had been left by an old scholar, of whose rise in life the others were immensely proud, and it had occasioned a great deal of gossip in the

continued the housemaid, just for the pleasure of talking about her old schoolfellow.

"He has a good deal of land out in New Zealand, and I believe he came over to get his children educated. Poor Susan left him with a large family, but he seems inclined to do his very best for them."

"Ma'am," said Elizabeth, earnestly, "you've been very good to me, and to more than me, but there's nothing you ever did that I feel such a kindness as your taking Sarah; and, ma'am, if ever I can assist the school, as poor Mrs. Kilmer did, I certainly will, for it's an excellent charity - the best in the town."

So Sarah was duly installed in her sister's place. Mrs. Richmond went into the church to see Elizabeth married, and from thence she drove in her pony phaeton to the railway-station to meet her two younger daughters, who had been paying a visit to some friends. "I shall be more comfortable now," she thought; "their being at home makes the house so much more cheerful for Harriet. She will be in better spirits, and I shall have Moxon to see that all goes on smoothly, and to keep that troublesome girl, Sarah, in order."

Moxon was one of those useful, accommodating, and intelligent people who are a treasure in any household, small or large. Partly ladies' maid, partly parlour-maid, a good nurse, a fair dressmaker, she had attached herself to the family, especially to Mrs. Richmond; and her only fault was that one which besets some of the best of her class jealousy.

She had been very jealous of Elizabeth, because she also was useful and intelligent, and it gave her sincere pleasure to find that this young woman was not "to stand in her light" any more.

In her own opinion there was almost always somebody standing in her light, and she gave herself infinite pains and did more than was required of her lest any fellow servant should have the least chance of becoming a serious rival.

Her employers, however, reaped the fruit of this peculiarity without discerning the root from which it sprang, and they prized her accordingly.

"And how is Harriet?" asked Josephine, the elder of the two girls. Josephine was tall, very proud, and rather pretty.

"She is lounging on the sofa in her own room. You must do something, my dears, to amuse her. The dear child has felt your absence a good deal when - when there was no amusement of any sort going on."

This dear child was twenty-seven years of age. She was rather delicate, entirely selfish, and perfectly idle.

46

It certainly is a little hard," continued the indulgent mother, "that you and Laura should so frequently be invited out and she so seldom."

"Dear mamma," said Laura, "I am certain that if you were poor, and it was an object to have us away, or if we were sick and wanted change, the Gregsons, and the Bartons, and Aunt Mills, would invite us all impartially to do us good, but at present how natural it is that they should ask those who, as it were, do them good, who amuse them, and make themselves useful."

66

Yes," said Josephine, "no doubt it is a great pleasure to go to Aunt Mills, there is so much society there. But then we help her to make her parties go off well, and we play at chess with Uncle Mills, and now the governess is away we walk out with the little girls, and hear them practise, and play the seraphine in the church, in short, we find out what wants doing, and do it."

"I know you do," said the mother," and that is one reason why I miss you so much when you are away.".

But Harriet is a charge," said Josephine, "she has an incurable habit of looking at things from the passive point of view.”

"I don't know what you mean, my dear?"

“Why, mamma, she never says I have not understood such and such people, but always they do not understand me; she never considers when things occur what share she may have had in causing them to occur. She, as it were, sits still in her chair and considers whether other people are waiting on her properly; and if they have not come to her, or coming have not sympathised, then she writes down in her journal a long tirade about its being the lot of some people not to be appreciated, not to be loved, and all that kind of thing."

"Well, dear," said the mother, "I rather hoped that now you had been away for some weeks, and were fresh to the home duties, you would find this one of attending to her less irksome than before."

"I shall," said Josephine; and to do her justice, she had spent many an hour that she would rather have employed otherwise in practising duets with Harriet, rowing with her, shooting with her, and otherwise satisfying her exacting nature.

Laura went upstairs, and opened Harriet's door. She expected to find her sister languishing and a little pettish, waiting to be entertained with accounts of parties and pic

nics, but also finding food, in the recital, for wondering complaints that she had not been pressed to join her sisters.

She found nothing of the kind. Harriet, in high spirits, was standing at one end of the sofa, and Moxon at the other; they were measuring a transparent muslin of a lovely blue colour.

"Isn't it charming?" said Harriet, when the sisters had kissed each other; " and so cheap."

"Yes, ma'am," observed Moxon. "I knew you'd want a muslin for this archery party that Miss Laura talked of. As I went through Birmingham, keeping my eyes open, as I always do, I saw this, and thought it would just suit you. So I took the liberty to buy it, and I got the money from Miss Josephine."

"Yes, Moxon," said Harriet, "you do understand me. Of course you know that my last silk dress would be spoilt at such a party. You do think of me when you are away."

"I thought," said Moxon, continuing to measure it with her finger, "that even if it would not wash, you could wear it occasionally during the whole summer; and having so much blue ribbon by you, and my making it up, ma'am, would ensure its being a cheap dress, and so sweetly becoming." "Yes; it just suits her complexion," said Laura.

"And Mrs. Mills' maid gave me a pattern of a pretty sleeve," said Moxon," a new one of the dress that Mrs. Mills had for a wedding. She had it from Paris.”

Laura went away; for Harriet was joyous, blooming, and satisfied; Moxon was all in all. Circumstances just then were doing their duty by Harriet. A party was coming on, and here was a new gown wherein to appear at it.

As she moved to the door, Harriet exclaimed, "Oh, but, Moxon! my hat has a mauve feather in it."

"Very true, ma'am; but Miss Laura has a white feather lying by, and I thought ".

"O yes, Moxon, I will lend it for the occasion," said Laura; and she closed the door and thought: "Dear me! when I am seven-and-twenty shall I have nothing better to excite and interest me than these stupid parties, and feathers, and blue muslin gowns? O, how small is one's importance in the world! Mamma evidently forgets that it is my birthday twenty-three! Only think of being twenty-three, and having done nothing worth mentioning nothing at all, in fact, since I came from school, except waiting on Goody Fairdew. What

shall I do? What can I do? I hate cant; but if I didn't know that not only in Josephine's case, but among several of my school friends who wanted a mission, they were no sooner engaged to be married than they forgot all about it, I think I would cry out for a mission too."

The words For no man among you liveth to himself," came into her mind; and the reflection that they were not written as if Paul was inculcating a duty, but simply as if he referred to a fact; not "No man should," but "No man doth, no man among you Christians does so live."

"Then what right have I so to live? Certainly it makes the matter no better that Josephine, who used to think so much more strongly than I did on this very point, has now lost sight of it. And yet, even she does not exactly live to herself, nor will she. George is everything to her; and to please him and his family is all she thinks about. And as for me, I have nothing to do but to please myself now that Goody Fairdew is dead."

Goody Fairdew was a very old woman when first Laura came from school. She had been bedridden for many years. She had one daughter who lived with her; and they were extremely poor, partly because this daughter could not go out cooking, as had been her former occupation. She was a very good cook, and had been accustomed to go round to the houses in the neighborhood, and help the servants on occasions of dinner parties, or of company in the house. "But I cannot do that now," she once said to Laura, "not even in the summer, for I dare not leave mother for a whole day. It is a great loss, for I used to sleep at home, and I was often out four or five days running, for weeks. But now my nearest neighbour is dead. You know she lived at the cottage just a quarter of a mile off; now she is dead, at home I must stay, for there is nobody that can come in and look after mother as she did. No, not for love or yet for money."

How often should some one look in upon your mother in the course of the day?" asked Laura.

Why, miss, early in the morning I used to give her a good breakfast, and start off by six to my place, leaving a good lump of coal on the fire. We're so near the pit, that, thank God, we don't want for cheap tuel, and that's a great thing; for where I came from, coal was dear and small. Well, miss, then about eleven, you know, dinner time, my neighbour came in, broke up the coal,

--

and maybe fried a bit of bacon or broke two or three eggs, for I could afford a good dinner for mother when I was in work perhaps she boiled her some potatoes, too, or a cabbage, if mother had a mind to it, and then, miss, what with propping her up and feeding her, and making up the fire again, very near an hour was gone, for mother has no notion of being hurried over her meals when she likes them. Well, then she went away and came again about four, and boiled the kettle for her tea, and made her her toast and dripping - and then got her into her chair to have it, and made her bed for her, and settled her comfortably; that was not done either much under an hour. After that she did very well till I came home. My poor neighbour's death is a great loss to me sure-ly.'

"I will be the old woman's neighbour," thought Laura; but she said nothing till she got home, and then she unfolded her plan to her mother, and in the presence of her sisters. The mother was silent, Josephine was much vexed, but Harriet was enthusiastic. "Dear Laura," she exclaimed, "what a delightful idea; it is just the sort of thing that I should like to help you in! I like nice clean poor people, and these Fairdews are always so delightfully clean, their little window so bright, and besides, the mother is such a picturesque-looking old creature."

"These would be rather menial occupations for Laura," said Josephine; for she never counted for a moment on any real help from Harriet.

"Oh, but she would not be obliged to do them," said Harriet; "of course it would be very disagreeable to have to make one's own bed; but this sort of thing— Oh, I declare it is quite romantic." "I should have some occupation," said Laura to Josephine; and this is the only one that I can think of.” Why should you? asked Josephine. 'Why? You know very well that we all think we ought not to live entirely for ourselves. We all say that we wish to look up to our Redeemer as an example."

66

66

66

66

66

"I think you are rushing into this without much thought," answered Josephine. My dear," said her mother, you must consider what a tie such an occupation would be to you. Goody Fairdew may live for years."

66 Yes, mother; but the hours would not interfere with yours. She scarcely lives a quarter of a mile from us; I could walk back after her dinner, and be in more than

time for our luncheon. It would be just the same in the afternoon, I should be home before the time to dress for dinner." "It would interfere with all the pic-nics and archery parties," said Louisa.

"You must remember that these only come in the summer," answered Laura, "and then the daughter is seldom out more than three days in the week."

"And the other three?" asked Harriet, apprehensively. "I don't think I should consider it right, Laura, to give up society; happy as I should be to help at other

times."

"The other three," said Laura, "often go by without any engagement of that sort. If one did come in the way, of course I should give it up. Mamma, I wish you would speak."

"My dear, "answered the mother, "I only hesitate on account of weather; for you might be obliged to go out every day." "As a governess does," observed Laura. "Very good for me, I should think." "And it is rather a lonely place," continued her mother.

"When I had no other companion, I could always take Grip with me, and he can scare the sturdiest beggar away."

Very well," said the mother, with a sigh, for people are much more willing to trust God for themselves than for their children, "I consent;" and she decided in her own mind that when the day was rainy, or her daughter had a cold, she would send her housemaid.

"Why do you dislike this plan?" said Laura to her sister Josephine, when they were alone in their room.

"I said very little," answered Josephine. "But I know you dislike it."

64

Conspicuous!" exclaimed Laura; "conspicuous—in what way?”

“Oh," said Josephine, forgetting herself, "I only meant that everybody would know then that you think a great deal about these things, if you will even give up society for the sake of them."

"These things" really meant personal religion and religious duties, quite as much as works of charity and benevolence; and Josephine was vexed with herself when she heard the answer.

"I do think of these things a little, but I want to think of them a great deal more: and I want, as much as I can, to put myself in the way of thinking about them more."

"So do I," said Josephine, "but this is

- in

going out of your way for them. It's short, it's putting your hand to the plough.""

"Was the man to blame," said Laura, "for putting his hand to the plough, or for taking it back again when the furrow was only half-finished?"

"For taking it back," answered Josephine, who observed at once the drift of her sister's question.

"Then why do you dissuade me from setting my hand to this? Surely it is better to begin, and go on if I can, than to refrain from beginning at all; besides, if I begin I may expect help, and go on with that help."

"But if you do not go on every one will say you are inconsistent. You will have given a kind of pledge which you may find burdensome. This is not one hard thing to be done and over, but a series of tiresome little things that will seem as if they would never be over."

"You mean," said Laura, "that it is safer to put one's standard as low as possible."

"I rather meant safer not to put it too high."

"Josey, that does not answer: put the standard low, and you will go lower. I am sure of it. Put the standard high, and you will strive to reach it."

"And fail, perhaps."

"Very likely; but how much you think about consistency. Had I not better be doing rightly sometimes than never? Your plan would be consistently to refrain from doing good at any time."

"You have such an odd way of putting things," was the answer. "I do not want to discourage you from visiting the poor; you might take a district instead of inventing this plan."

"You know very well that in this small place the districts are sought after- actually sought after."

Only since we had such a paragon of a curate, and he always in and out of the houses. Well, if a district is not to be had, there is the school."

"Do they want another visitor there?" No."

"But Goody Fairdew does want her dinner, and she does want her bed made. Let me do that till I find something better to do."

Nothing better was found. The old woman's need seldom interfered with Laura's amusements; when it did, she generally made amusements give way, unless her mother wished to send the housemaid to the