e who
made time in time would show.

"Are you going to be long in London, Mary?" asked Letty.

"Oh, a long time!" answered Mary, with a loving glance.

Letty's eyes fell, and she looked troubled.

"I am so sorry, Mary," she said, "that I can not ask you to come here!
We have only these two rooms, and--and--you see--Mrs. Helmer is not
very liberal to Tom, and--because they--don't get on together very
well--as I suppose everybody knows--Tom won't--he won't consent
to--to--"

"You little goose!" cried Mary; "you don't think I would come down on
you like a devouring dragon, without even letting you know, and finding
whether it would suit you!--I have got a situation in London."

"A situation!" echoed Letty. "What can you mean, Mary? You haven't left
your own shop, and gone into somebody else's?"

"No, not exactly that," replied Mary, laughing; "but I have no doubt
most people would think that by far the more prudent thing to have
done."

"Then I don't," said Letty, with a little flash of her old enthusiasm.
"Whatever you do, Mary, I am sure will always be the best."

"I am glad I have so much of your good opinion, Letty; but I am not
sure I shall have it still, when I have told you what I have done.
Indeed, I am not quite sure myself that I have done wisely; but, if I
have made a mistake, it is from having listened to love more than to
prudence."

"What!" cried Letty; "you're married, Mary?"

And here a strange thing, yet the commonest in the world, appeared; had
her own marriage proved to Letty the most blessed of fates, she could
not have shown more delight at the idea of Mary's. I think men find
women a little incomprehensible in this matter of their friends'
marriage: in their largerheartedness, I presume, women are able to hope
for their friends, even when they have lost all hope for themselves.

"No," replied Mary, amused at having thus misled her. "It is neither so
bad nor so good as that. But I was far from comfortable in the shop
without my father, and kept thinking how to find a life, more suitable
for me. It was not plain to me that my lot was cast there any longer,
and one has no right to choose difficulty; for, even if difficulty be
the right thing for you, the difficulty you choose can't be the right
difficulty. Those that are given to choosing, my father said, are given
to regretting. Then it happened that I fell in love--not with a
gentleman--don't look like that, Letty--but with a lady; and,