, and do
everything,' Mrs. Atherton continued. 'My dear Mrs. Tracy, you can never
stand it in a house like this, and Mr. Arthur would not like it if he
knew. Why he kept as many as six servants, and sometimes more. Pray let
me advise you, and commend to you a good girl; who lived with me three
years, and can do everything, from dressing my hair to making a
blanc-mange. I only parted with her because she was sick, and now that
she is well, her place is filled. Try her, and do not make a servant of
yourself. It is not fitting that you should.'

Grace was fond of giving advice, and had said more than she intended
saying when she began, but Mrs. Tracy, though annoyed, was not angry,
and consented to receive the girl who had lived at Brier Hill three
years, and who, she reflected, could be of use to her in many ways.

While sitting there in her soiled working dress talking to the elegant
Mrs. Atherton she had felt her inferiority more keenly than she had ever
done before, while at the same time she was conscious that a new set of
ideas and thoughts had taken possession of her, reawaking in her the
germ of that ambition to be somebody which she had felt so often when a
girl, and which now was to bud and blossom, and bear fruit a hundred
fold. She would take the girl, and from her learn the ways of the world
as presented at Brier Hill. She would no longer wear sacking aprons, and
open the door herself. She would be more like Grace Atherton, whom she
watched admiringly as she went down the walk to the handsome carriage
waiting for her, with driver and footman in tall hats and long coats on
the box.

This was the beginning of the fine lady into which Dolly finally
blossomed, and when that day Frank went home to his dinner he noticed
something in her manner which he could not understand until she told him
of Mrs. Atherton's call, and the plight in which that lady had found
her.

'Served you right, Dolly,' Frank said, laughing till the tears ran. 'You
have no business to be digging round like a slave when we are able to
have what we like. Arthur said we were to keep up the place us he had
done, and that does not mean that you should be a scullion. No, Dolly;
have all the girls you want, and hold up your head with the best of
them. Get a new silk gown, and return Mrs. Atherton's call at once, and
take a card and turn down one corner or the other, I don't know which,
but this girl of hers can tell you. Pump her dry as a powder h