s health and strength would allow--at least as
long as her grandmother lived.

Hope is as blessed a provision for the poor and unhappy as occupation.
While oppressed with present ills they struggle to obtain a fancied
existence under happier auspices, furnishing a healthful and important
lesson to man, that never ceases to remind him of a future that is to
repair every wrong, apply a balm to every wound, if he will only make a
timely provision for its wants.

Again did Adrienne resume her customary round of duties. Four hours
each morning were devoted to me. Then followed the frugal breakfast,
when her commoner toil for the milliner succeeded. The rest of the day
was occupied with this latter work, for which she received the
customary fifteen sous. When she retired at night, which the ailings
and complaints of her grandmother seldom permitted before eleven, it
was with a sense of weariness that began to destroy sleep; still the
dear girl thought herself happy, for I more than equaled her
expectations, and she had latterly worked on me with so much zeal as to
have literally thrown the fruits of two weeks' work into one.

But the few francs Adrienne possessed diminished with alarming
rapidity. She began to calculate her ways and means once more, and this
was no longer done as readily as before. Her own wardrobe would not
bear any drain upon it. Early in the indisposition of her grandmother,
all of THAT had been sold which she could spare; for, with the
disinterestedness of her nature, when sacrifices became necessary her
first thoughts were of her own little stock of clothes. Of jewelry she
never had been the mistress of much, though the vicomtesse had managed
to save a few relics of her own ancient magnificence. Nevertheless,
they were articles of but little value, the days of her exile having
made many demands on all such resources.

It happened, one evening when Adrienne was receiving her wages from the
milliner, that the poor girl overheard a discourse that proved she was
not paid at the rate at which others were remunerated. Her eyes told
her that her own work was the neatest in the shop, and she also saw
that she did more than any other girl employed by the same person. As
she knew her own expertness with the needle, this did not surprise her;
but she felt some wonder that more and better work should produce the
least reward. Little did she understand the artifices of the selfish
and calculating, one of the most