178 THERE IS NO HURRY.

port wine, when she herself never drank even
gooseberry, except on Sundays; never ironed
a collar, never dusted the chimney-piece, or ate
a shoulder of mutton—roast one day, cold the
next, and hashed the third. While each day
brought some fresh illustration of her thought-
lessness to the eyes of the wife of the wealthy
tiller of the soil, the widow of the physician
thought herself in the daily practice of the most
rigid self-denial. ‘Iam sure,” was her cun-
stant observation to her all-patient daughter—
‘‘T am sure I never thought it would come to
this. I had not an idea of going through so
much. I wonder your uncle and his wife can
permit me to live in the way I do—they ought
to consider how I was brought up.” It wasin |
vain Mary represented that they were existing
upon charity ; that they ought to be most grate-
ful for what they received, coming as it did from
those who, in their days of prosperity, professed
nothing, while those who professed all things
had done nothing. Mary would so reason, and
then retire to her own chamber to weep alone
over things more hard to bear.

It is painful to observe what bitterness will
creep into the heart and manner of really kind
girls where a lover is in the case, or even where
acommon-place dangling sort of flirtation is
going forward ; this depreciating ill nature, one
of the other, is not confined by any means to
the fair sex. Young men pick each other to