t of the Devonshire Estcourts, and she was a Dobbs of
Birmingham. Besides, he was a philosopher, and philosophers never mind
anything. But Anna was in a less agreeable situation. She was not a
philosopher, she was thin-skinned, she had bestowed nothing and was
taking everything, and she was of an independent nature; and an
independent nature, where there is no money, is a great nuisance to its
possessor.

When she was younger and more high-flown she sometimes talked of
sweeping crossings; but her sister-in-law Susie would not hear of
crossings, and dressed her beautifully, and took her out, and made her
dance and dine and do as other girls did, being of opinion that a rich
husband of good position was more satisfactory than crossings, and far
more likely to make some return for all the expenses she had had.

At eighteen Anna was so pretty that the perfect husband seemed to be a
mere question of days. What could the most desirable of men, thought
Susie, considering her, want more than so bewitching a young creature?
But he did not come, somehow, that man of Susie's dreams; and after a
year or two, when Anna began to understand what all this dressing and
dancing really meant, and after she had had offers from people she did
not like, and had herself fallen in love with a youth of no means who
was prudent enough to marry somebody else with money, she shrank back
and grew colder, and objected more and more decidedly to Susie's
strenuous private matrimonial urgings, and sometimes made remarks of a
cynical nature to her admirers, who took fright at such symptoms of
advancing age, and fell off considerably in numbers.

It was at this period, when she was barely twenty-two, that she spoke of
crossings. Susie had seriously reproved her for not meeting the advances
of an old and rich and single person with more enthusiasm, and had at
the same time alluded to the number of pounds she had spent on her every
year for the last three years, and the necessity for putting an end, by
marrying, to all this outlay; and instead of being sensible, and talking
things over quietly, Anna had poured out a flood of foolish sentiments
about the misery of knowing that she was expected to be nice to every
man with money, the intolerableness of the life she was leading, and the
superior attractions of crossing-sweeping as a means of earning a
livelihood.

"Why, you haven't enough money for the broom," said Susie impatiently.
"You can't sweep with