ually say this to my face, looking at me all the time with
those honest eyes! I could not forbear a little shrug at this, but she
turned the subject, placidly, but with much dignity.

"I have been a working bee all my life, and have been quite contented
with my lot; if you could only follow my example, I should be perfectly
willing to let you go. I have thought once or twice lately that if
anything were to happen to me, you and your uncle would hardly be
comfortable together; you do not study him sufficiently; you have no
idea what he really is."

I thought it better to remain silent.

Aunt Agatha sighed a little as she went on.

"I am not afraid of work for you, Merle, there is no life without
activity. 'The idle man,' as someone observes, 'spins on his own axis in
the dark.' 'A man of mere capacity undeveloped,' as Emerson says, 'is
only an organised daydream with a skin on it.' Just listen to this,"
opening a book that lay near her. "'Action and enjoyment are contingent
upon each other. When we are unfit for work we are always incapable of
pleasure; work is the wooing by which happiness is won.'"

"Yes, yes," I returned, rather impatiently, for Aunt Agatha, with all
her perfections, was too much given to proverbial and discursive
philosophy; "but to reduce this to practice, what work can I do in this
weary world?"

"You cannot be a governess, not even a nursery governess, Merle," and
here Aunt Agatha looked at me very gently, as though she knew her words
must give me pain, and suddenly my cheeks grew hot and my eyelids
drooped. Alas! I knew too well what Aunt Agatha meant; this was a sore
point, the great difficulty and stumbling block of my young life.

I had been well taught in a good school; I had had unusual advantages,
for Aunt Agatha was an accomplished and clever woman, and spared no
pains with me in her leisure hours; but by some freak of Nature, not
such an unusual thing as people would have us believe, from some want of
power in the brain--at least, so a clever man has since told me--I was
unable to master more than the rudiments of spelling.

I know some people would laugh incredulously at this, but the fact will
remain.

As a child I have lain sobbing on my bed, beaten down by a very anguish
of humiliation at being unable to commit the column of double syllables
to memory, and have only been comforted by Aunt Agatha's patience and
gentleness.

At school I had a severer ordeal. For a long time