been so decidedly poor, he would
please himself, without asking Mammy's leave, he could tell her."

His coarse comrades received his disrespectful insubordination to his
mother's authority as an excellent joke; while Mary only shuddered at
his indelicate avowal of his liking for her sister, which filled her
mind with a thousand indefinite fears.

Sophy, of late, had been able to obtain but little work in the
neighbourhood; she was silent and dejected, and murmured constantly
against her poverty, and the want of every comfort that could render
life tolerable. Sometimes she talked of going into service, but, against
this project, so new from her mouth, her mother objected, as she had no
one else during the day to wait upon her, or speak to her. More
generally, however, she speculated upon some wealthy tradesman making
her his wife, and placing her at once above want and work.

"I care not," she would say, "how old or ugly he might be, if he would
only take me out of this, and make a lady of me."

Mary shook her head, and tried, in hoarse ejaculations, to express her
disapprobation of such an immoral avowal of sentiments she could but
regard with horror; while she fixed upon her sister those piercing eyes,
which seemed to look into her very soul--those eyes which, gleaming
through fast-falling tears, made the vain girl shiver and turn away.

"Sophy," said Mrs. Grimshawe gravely, for the remark was made one
evening, by her mother's bed-side; "Mary cannot speak her thoughts, but
I understand her perfectly, and can speak them for her, and would
seriously ask you, if you think it a crime to sell your soul for money?"

"Certainly not; I would do anything to get rid of the weary life I lead.
All day chained down to my needle, and all night kept awake by the moans
of the sick. At eighteen years of age, is it not enough to drive me
mad?"

"It is what the Lord has been pleased to appoint--a heavy burden,
doubtless, but meant for your good. Look at Mary: her lot is harder than
yours, yet she never repines."

Sophy flashed a scornful look at her sister, as she replied--

"Mary is not exposed to the same temptations. Nature has placed her
beyond them. I am handsome, and several years younger than her. She is
deformed, and has a frightful impediment in her speech, and is so plain
that no one could fall in love with her, or wish to make her a wife. Men
think her hideous, but they do not laugh at her for being poor and
shabby a