othing might she wear
but her plain black frock and white frill. I gave Jane a book of poems
with woodcuts, and that was accepted with rapture. This encouraged me. I
picked up two little children on the road, and to one I gave a bright
silk girdle for a skipping-rope, and to the other a doll dressed from
the materials of a fine gauze hat, which I picked to pieces for the
purpose. I was not going to be a peony flaunting among thrifty modest
vetches. At first I was sorry for the destruction of my pretty things,
but soon I grew to admire the demureness of my gray gown and little
black apron. I learned to make pies and cakes, to sweep a room and set
it to rights, to wash and get up linen and laces, to churn, to make
butter. But as many hands were engaged in these matters, I was often
thrown out of employment. I made music for my friends in the evenings,
and, as they liked it, this was something; but it was not enough. A new
spirit had entered into me. I felt my old self lost in the admiration
which I had conceived for the new friends who had accepted me amongst
them.

By and by I found out a little niche of usefulness for myself. Jane and
Mopsie attended the village school. One day I went to the town to buy
some trifle and call for the girls. It was past the hour for breaking
up, and I found Mopsie romping with some rude-looking girls on the
green, while Jane, detained for some fault, sat alone in the
school-room, perched on a bench, her arms folded and her eyes gloomily
fixed on the wall. When I entered she blushed crimson. She was a proud
girl, and I knew she was hurt at my seeing her disgrace. I coaxed her to
speak out her trouble.

"I could teach the whole school," she said, fiercely--"master, mistress,
and all--and yet I am kept sitting over a, b, c, like a baby. I get so
sick of it that sometimes I answer wrong by way of novelty. Then I have
to hold out my hand for the rod. To-day I drew Portia and Shylock on my
slate, and forgot to finish my sum; therefore I am disgraced!"

I seized the happy moment and offered myself to the girls as a
governess. Mopsie stopped on the road and hugged me in delight. Jane
squeezed my hand and was silent during the rest of the walk, except when
she said,

"Mother will never consent. I am too proud, and she wants me to be
humbled. She thinks it is good for me to go to the village school."

That night, however, I laid my plan before Mrs. Hollingford, and, after
some trouble, I attai