n the firm
ground and watch you see that you do but go round. But to climb up
Jacob's ladder, whereof the Lord stands at the top, it will be other
eyes that behold you climbing up, when in your own eyes you have not
bettered yourself by a step. Climb as high as you will there, dear
maids!--but never mind the ladders that go round. They are infinitely
disappointing. I know it, for I have climbed them."

"Well, Mrs Dolly, do go on, now, and tell us all about it, there's a
good soul!" said Rhoda.

Little Mrs Dorothy was executing some elaborate knitting. She went on
with it for a few seconds in silence.

"I was but sixteen," she said, quietly, "when my mother came to visit
me. I could not remember seeing her before: and very frighted was I of
the grand gentlewoman, for so she seemed to me, that rustled into the
farmhouse kitchen in silken brocade, and a velvet tippet on her neck.
She was evenly disappointed with me. She thought me stiff and gloomy;
and I thought her strange and full of vanities. `In three years' time,
Dolly,' quoth she, `thou wilt be nineteen, and I will then have thee up
to Town, and thou shalt see somewhat of the world. Thou art not
ill-favoured,' quoth she,--'twas my mother that said this, my dears,"
modestly interpolated Mrs Dorothy,--"and I dare say thou wilt be the
Town talk in a week. 'Tis pity there is no better world to have thee
into!--and thy father as sour and Puritanical as any till of late, save
the mark!--but there, `we must swim with the tide,' saith she. `'Tis a
long lane that has no turning.' Ah me! but the lane had turned ere I
was nineteen."

"Why, Mrs Dolly, the Restoration must have been that very year,"
observed Rhoda.

"That very year," repeated Mrs Dorothy. "'Twas in April I quitted
Farmer Ingham's house, and was fetched up to London; and in May came the
King in, and was shortly thereafter crowned."

"If it please you," asked Phoebe, speaking for the first time of her own
accord, "were you glad to go, Madam?"

"Well, my dear, I was partly glad and partly sorry. I was sorrowful to
take leave of mine old friends, little knowing if I should ever see them
again or no; yet, like an untried maid, I was mightily set up with the
thought of seeing London, and the lions, and Whitehall, and the like.
Silly maid that I was! I had better have shed tears for the last than
for the first."

"What thought you the finest thing in London?" said Rhoda. "But tell
us, what tho