her finger was getting
severely ploughed up with the stitching she had been doing to save her
mother's eyes.

"There was not to be an inch of machine work," Mrs. Robson had said, and
the Hollises were people who fulfilled all they undertook.

But Jessie's hour at home had helped and freshened her mother, who
looked much less worn and worried than she had done the day before.
Jessie felt she had done well to send away the handkerchiefs, and lessen
the burthen Grace had taken upon the family.

CHAPTER VIII.

AMY'S VISITS.

NOBODY could say any great harm of Florence Cray, or she would not have
been bound to Miss Lee.

But she was one of those silly, vulgar-minded girls who think life is
nothing without continually chattering either to young men or about
them. She was in no hurry to be married, for then she knew she must give
up all her lively pastime with the lads around her. Not that she
frequented the bar, or had anything to do with the customers--her mother
kept her carefully from that; but she had plenty of acquaintance, and to
her mind nothing else was so amusing. She was not pretty, and knew it
well enough, but she was very good-natured, and free from jealousy, and
next to diverting herself with some youth, she liked nothing so well as
teasing other girls about them.

She considered Amy Lee quite old enough and pretty enough to have a
young man, and to begin to have some fun, and she thought all the care
taken of the girl by her father and aunts only so much stupid old fidget
and jealousy, which it was fun to baffle and elude. Thus she was a very
dangerous companion for Amy, perhaps more so than a really worse person,
who would have been more shocking and startling to Amy's sense of
modesty and propriety. It was such a new sensation altogether to be
always popping about and peeping to admire the handsome stranger and his
fine horses, and then to whisk giggling out of the way, in terror lest
they had been seen.

It was more amusing than sitting by a fretful boy, trying to make him
read and say hymns, and though conscience was half awake, it was easily
satisfied. And then there was the pleasure of being told that she was
admired--though Amy would not have liked it as well if she had guessed
that Florence used to amuse herself on the other hand by telling Mr.
Wingfield how a certain young lady admired him, and teasing him by
declaring that, "Oh no! she could not tell him who, she should be
nameless.