t that
Miss Needwood's satin-stitch looked better than her own.

Little "n" was done before the twilight tidying, which did not amount to
much, for Grace soon lighted the lamp; but Jessie, in putting up the
shop shutters, made the arm, which had once been crushed, tremble so
much that she could not work without pricking her finger, and Mrs.
Hollis really could not see. So Grace let them both go to bed, and
Jessie half waked to hear her bustling about, and coming up herself just
after the clock struck twelve. She would not have set a stitch on any
account after that!

Jessie was up early enough to light the fire, and set out the breakfast
things, and put on the kettle, while both her mother and Grace were
still in bed. She had a peaceful, happy time then, but otherwise she had
never known such an uncomfortable Sunday.

Mrs. Hollis was down when she came back, but was fretting over the very
large bit that had gone out of the cheese. Jessie thought they had eaten
it for want of meat; her mother suspected Jenny Simkins. Then she had
not been allowed time to copy out her accounts into the book, and there
had been a great puzzle between a three and a five on the slate last
night, which seemed to have been worrying her all night in her dreams;
and the uncleaned look of the house vexed her. She was tired and not
like herself, and Jessie only left her for school and church on hearing
Grace's step on the stairs.

At school she could forget all about it in the interest of teaching, but
the worry returned when her mother's place was empty at the beginning of
the service; and when Mrs. Hollis did come posting in at the end of the
_Venite_, she was so hot and panting that she had to sit down and fan
herself with her pocket-handkerchief all through the Psalms, and Jessie
even feared she might be going to faint.

"Oh dear," Mrs. Hollis mourned, when they came out of church, "she had
never been so upset before, but she had been so put about to get off,
with none of her things ready, and she was _that_ tired and sleepy she
had not heard a word of the sermon. Grace really had undertaken too
much. The house was in such a mess there was no sitting down quiet and
respectable, and there was threepence in the till that would not be
accounted for, and she was sure that the cheese was going too fast." She
fretted all the way home, and Jessie could not comfort her, by promising
to look over the accounts the first thing on Monday.

However,