s and
hints of capture in all the girl's speeches and answers. Miss Clapp,
grown quite a young woman now, is declared by the soured old lady to be
an unbearable and impudent little minx. Why Amelia can be so fond of
her, or have her in her room so much, or walk out with her so
constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive. The bitterness of poverty has
poisoned the life of the once cheerful and kindly woman. She is
thankless for Amelia's constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps
at her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her for her
silly pride in her child and her neglect of her parents. Georgy's
house is not a very lively one since Uncle Jos's annuity has been
withdrawn and the little family are almost upon famine diet.

Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find some means of
increasing the small pittance upon which the household is starving.
Can she give lessons in anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? She
finds that women are working hard, and better than she can, for
twopence a day. She buys a couple of begilt Bristol boards at the
Fancy Stationer's and paints her very best upon them--a shepherd with
a red waistcoat on one, and a pink face smiling in the midst of a
pencil landscape--a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge,
with a little dog, nicely shaded. The man of the Fancy Repository and
Brompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of whom she bought the screens, vainly
hoping that he would repurchase them when ornamented by her hand) can
hardly hide the sneer with which he examines these feeble works of art.
He looks askance at the lady who waits in the shop, and ties up the
cards again in their envelope of whitey-brown paper, and hands them to
the poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such beautiful things
in her life, and had been quite confident that the man must give at
least two guineas for the screens. They try at other shops in the
interior of London, with faint sickening hopes. "Don't want 'em," says
one. "Be off," says another fiercely. Three-and-sixpence has been
spent in vain--the screens retire to Miss Clapp's bedroom, who
persists in thinking them lovely.

She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and after long
thought and labour of composition, in which the public is informed that
"A Lady who has some time at her disposal, wishes to undertake the
education of some little girls, whom she would instruct in English, in
French, in Geography,