Patience.

"How old is she? Younger than we, I suppose?" Now Clarissa Underwood
at this time was one-and-twenty, and Patience was nearly two years
her senior.

"Oh, yes;--about nineteen, I should say. I think I have been told
that there were four or five older than Mary, who all died. Is it not
strange and terrible,--to be left alone, the last of a large family,
with not a relation whom one has ever seen?"

"Poor dear girl!"

"If she wrote the letter herself," continued Patience, "I think she
must be clever."

"I am sure I could not have written a letter at all in such a
position," said Clarissa. And so they sat, almost as late as their
father, discussing the probable character and appearance of this
new relation, and the chance of their being able to love her with
all their hearts. There was the necessity for an immediate small
sacrifice, but as to that there was no difficulty. Hitherto the two
sisters had occupied separate bedrooms, but now, as one chamber must
be given up to the stranger, it would be necessary that they should
be together. But there are sacrifices which entail so little pain
that the pleasant feeling of sacrificial devotion much more than
atones for the consequences.

Patience Underwood, the elder and the taller of the two girls, was
certainly not pretty. Her figure was good, her hands and feet were
small, and she was in all respects like a lady; but she possessed
neither the feminine loveliness which comes so often simply from
youth, nor that other, rarer beauty, which belongs to the face
itself, and is produced by its own lines and its own expression. Her
countenance was thin, and might perhaps have been called dry and
hard. She was very like her father,--without, however, her father's
nose, and the redeeming feature of her face was to be found in that
sense of intelligence which was conveyed by her bright grey eyes.
There was the long chin, and there was the long upper lip, which,
exaggerated in her father's countenance, made him so notoriously
plain a man. And then her hair, though plentiful and long, did not
possess that shining lustre which we love to see in girls, and which
we all recognise as one of the sweetest graces of girlhood. Such,
outwardly, was Patience Underwood; and of all those who knew her well
there was not one so perfectly satisfied that she did want personal
attraction as was Patience Underwood herself. But she never spoke
on the subject,--even to her sister. She did n