go EGLANTINE OR

I have not counted either the expense of the mistress
I had teaching you fancy work, or the enormous
quantity of silk thread and velvet you wasted without
having anything to show for it.’

‘But,’ repeated Eglantine, ‘four hundred pounds!
I can’t believe it.’

‘I told you often, ay, a hundred times, that little
expenses often repeated soon make great ones, and
in the end, if persisted in, will ruin you. For example:
you have had two watches since you were eight years
of age, and not a single month passed from then till
now without your having to send them to be repaired
—at one time a glass was wanted, at another the
main-spring, and so on. Every month your watches
alone cost six or seven shillings, and sometimes even
more, so that at the end of ten years, for that one
item alone, the expense has been about forty pounds!
It would be wise if you could even now regret money
wasted like that, and reflect how much good could
have been done with it otherwise. The £400 you
have lost, my child,.might have made more than
twenty poor families happy in a time of need.’

This last phrase of her mother’s made Eglantine’s
tears flow. She took her mother’s hands in her own,
and said—