r is not half so heavy."

"Oh, it ain't the weight, miss!" returned the footman, who had not
intended she should hear the remark. "I believe Mr. Cabman and myself
will prove equal to the occasion."

With that the book-box came down a great bump on the pavement, and
presently both were in the hall, the one on the top of the other. Mary
paid the cabman, who asked not a penny more than his fare; he departed
with thanks; the facetious footman closed the door, told her to take a
seat, and went away full of laughter, to report that the young person
had brought a large library with her to enliven the dullness of her new
situation.

Mrs. Perkin smiled crookedly, and, in a tone of pleasant reproof,
desired her laughter-compressing inferior not to forget his manners.

"Please, ma'am, am I to leave the young woman sittin' up there all by
herself in the cold?" he asked, straightening himself up. "She do look
a rayther superior sort of young person," he added, "and the 'all-stove
is dead out."

"For the present, Castle," replied Mrs. Perkin.

She judged it wise to let the young woman have a lesson at once in
subjection and inferiority.

Mrs. Perkin was a rather tall, rather thin, quite straight, and very
dark-complexioned woman. She always threw her head back on one side and
her chin out on the other when she spoke, and had about her a great
deal of the authoritative, which she mingled with such consideration
toward her subordinates as to secure their obedience to her, while she
cultivated antagonism to her mistress. She had had a better education
than most persons of her class, but was morally not an atom their
superior in consequence. She never went into a new place but with the
feeling that she was of more importance by far than her untried
mistress, and the worthier person of the two. She entered her service,
therefore, as one whose work it was to take care of herself against a
woman whose mistress she ought to have been, had Providence but started
her with her natural rights. At the same time, she would have been
_almost_ as much offended by a hint that she was not a Christian, as
she would have been by a doubt whether she was a lady. For, indeed, she
was both, if a great opinion of herself constituted the latter, and a
great opinion of going to church constituted the former.

She had not been taken into Hesper's confidence with regard to Mary,
had discovered that "a young person" was expected, but had learned
nothing