separate
for the night.

"It isn't done yet; dear me how many stitches it does take to make a
garment!" sighed Lulu to Grace when they had retired to the room of the
latter.

"So it does," said Grace, "but papa says having to take so many of them,
one right after another, is a good lesson in patience and perseverance."

"Kind of lessons I'm not fond of," laughed Lulu.

"And you've worked so hard all the evening! you must be very tired."

"Yes, I'm tired; but I'd sit up and work an hour or two longer if it
wouldn't be disobedience to papa.

"Well I'll see how much I can do before breakfast to-morrow morning.
Perhaps I can finish; I hope I can."

She carried out her resolution, and when their father came in for the
customary bit of chat with his little daughters before breakfast, he
found her sewing diligently.

He commended her industry, particularly when Grace had told how much of
it had been shown the previous evening, but added that he hoped the
tasks he had set her had been first properly attended to.

"Yes, sir; I learned my lessons and wrote my composition yesterday,
before I began the sewing," she replied.

"That is well," he said, "I am glad to see you willing to use some of
your leisure time in working for the poor, but your education--which is
to fit you for greater usefulness in the future--must not be neglected
for that or anything else."

Lulu blushed with a sudden half conviction that her tasks had not been
so faithfully attended to as they should have been. But it was now too
late to remedy the failure, as the school hour would come very soon
after breakfast and family worship.

She wished she had learned her lessons more thoroughly and spent more
time and pains upon her composition, but hoped she might be able to
acquit her herself better, on being called to recite, than she feared.

However, it proved a vain hope; she hesitated and gave incorrect answers
several times in the first recitation, and when it came to the second
showed herself almost entirely unacquainted with the lesson.

Her father looked very grave but only said, as he handed back her book,
"These are the poorest recitations I have ever heard from you."

Then taking up her composition, which he had found lying on his desk and
had already examined, "And this, I am sorry to have to say, is a piece
of work that does no credit to my daughter; the writing is slovenly, the
sentences are badly constructed, and the spelling is ver