and word or two of approbation at
the annual examination?

Poor Kate! It was a marvel that she was not more spoiled by all this;
but she was naturally modest and unpresuming, and would have made a fine
and valuable character had she been brought up to _shine_, and not
merely to _glitter_. As it was, she had learned to read and write well,
and to calculate sums which were of little practical use to her.
Indeed, her head was not unlike the lumber-room of some good lady who
has indulged a mania for accumulating purchases simply because of their
cheapness, without consideration of their usefulness, whether present or
future; so that while she could give you the names and positions and
approximate distances of all the principal stars without mistake or
hesitation, she would have been utterly at a loss if set to make a
little arrow-root or beef--tea for a sick relation or friend.

She wound up her education at school by covering her teachers and
herself with honour by her answers, first to the elementary, and then to
the advanced questions in the papers sent down from the London Science
and Art Department. And when she left school, at the age of seventeen,
to take the place at home of her mother, who was now laid by through an
attack of paralysis, she received the public congratulations of the
school managers, and was afterwards habitually quoted as an example of
what might be acquired in the humbler ranks of life by diligence,
patience, and perseverance.

As for her religious education, it was what might have been expected
under the circumstances. Her parents, ignorant of the truth themselves,
though well-disposed, as it is called, to religion, had sent her when
quite a little one to the Sunday-school, where she picked up a score or
two of texts and as many hymns. She also had gone to church regularly
once every Sunday, but certainly had acquired little other knowledge in
the house of God than an acquaintance with the most ingenious methods of
studying picture-books and story-books on the sly, and of trying the
patience of the teachers whose misfortune it was for the time to be in
command of the children's benches during divine service.

As she grew up, however, Sunday-school and church were both forsaken.
Tired with constant study and the few household duties which she could
not avoid performing, she was glad to lie in bed till the Sunday-school
bell summoned earlier risers; and with the school, the attendance at