says, "Stop one moment. Is there not an account to be settled
before you leave? We have now clothed and boarded you for ten years.
The trouble and expense, at the least calculation, amount to two
dollars a week. Indeed I do not suppose that you could have got any
one else to have taken you so cheap. Your board, for ten years, at
two dollars a week, amounts to one thousand and forty dollars. Are
you under no obligation to us for all this trouble and expense?"

You hang down your head and do not know what to say. What can you
say? You have no money. You cannot pay them.

Your mother, after waiting a moment for an answer, continues, "In
many cases, when a person does not pay what is justly due, he is sent
to jail. We, however, will be particularly kind to you, and wait
awhile. Perhaps you can, by working for fifteen or twenty years, and
by being very economical, earn enough to pay us. But let me see; the
interest of the money will be over sixty dollars a year. Oh, no! it
is out of the question. You probably could not earn enough to pay us
in your whole life. We never shall be paid for the time, expense, and
care, we have devoted to our ungrateful daughter. We hoped she would
love us, and obey us, and thus repay. But it seems she prefers to be
ungrateful and disobedient. Good by."

You open the door and go out. It is cold and windy. Shivering with
the cold, and without money, you are at once a beggar, and must
perish in the streets, unless some one takes pity on you.

You go, perhaps, to the house of a friend, and ask if they will allow
you to live with them.

They at once reply, "We have so many children of our own, that we
cannot afford to take you, unless you will pay for your board and
clothing."

You go again out into the street, cold, hungry, and friendless. The
darkness of the night is coming on; you have no money to purchase a
supper, or night's lodging. Unless you can get some employment, or
find some one who will pity you, you must lie down upon the hard
ground, and perish with hunger and with cold.

Perhaps some benevolent man sees you as he is going home in the
evening, and takes you to the overseers of the poor, and says, "Here
is a little vagrant girl I found in the streets. We must send the poor
little thing to the poor house, or she will starve to death."

You are carried to the poor house. There you had a very different home
from your father's. You are dressed in the coarsest garments. You have
t