gyman. I came to see
if you would let Nelly come to our house every day to learn to read.
It's a great pity she shouldn't know how."
"I don't care who your father is," retorted the woman in the same
insolent tone. "I don't see what you've got to do with it, whether
it's a pity or not. The child's lazy enough already, without havin'
them idees put into her head; and better people than her do without
book-learning."
"Lucy, do come away! I shan't stop to listen to her impudence,"
exclaimed Stella as she turned and walked away with a haughty air.
Mrs. Connor's quick eye followed her, and she half muttered to
herself, "A city gal!" Then, taking up the pail which Nelly had set
down, she went into the house without vouchsafing another look at
Lucy, who, seeing the uselessness of pressing her point, hastened to
join her cousin.
"Now you see, Lucy, you only get yourself insulted trying to do any
good to such people," said Stella triumphantly. "I remember one of
Sophy's friends once wanted her to go visiting poor people with her,
and papa said he wouldn't have her go on any account; it was all
nonsense running all sorts of risks to do good to people who didn't
want it."
"But it wasn't Mrs. Connor, but Nelly, that I wanted to do good to,
and she can't help what her odious stepmother does. Only think what
it must be to live with her!"
"I'd run away! But you see Nelly herself didn't seem to care about
learning to read."
"Because she didn't know the good of it," replied Lucy. "But what
should you or I have done if we hadn't been made to learn, whether we
liked it or not?"
"That's quite different. This girl will always have to work, I
suppose, and would get on well enough without learning to read. I know
mamma was always complaining that our servants were reading trashy
novels, that filled their heads with nonsense and made them
discontented."
"But you could have given them something better to read," suggested
Lucy.
Stella said nothing in reply to this; nor did she enlighten Lucy as to
the fact that in reading "trashy novels" the servants were only
following their young mistresses' example. Lucy in the meantime was
thinking what up-hill work doing good was, and how hard it was to know
how to do it. Suddenly she remembered her motto; she had been
forgetting that the difficulties of the way were to be met in a
strength not her own. Perhaps it was because she had not first asked
for that strength, that she had met
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