The next day there arrived at the house numberless trunks of large
dimensions, superintended by the small angry woman and a maid. An hour
later came a carriage, from whose door emerged the young lady and her
father. Both looked pale and fagged; both were led up-stairs in the
midst of voluble comments and commands by the mother; and both, entering
the apartment, seemed swallowed up by it, as we saw and heard nothing
further of them. Clelie was indignant.

"It is plain that the mother overwhelms them," she said. "A girl of that
age should speak and be interested in any novelty. This one would be if
she were not wretched. And the poor little husband!"--

"My dear," I remarked, "you are a feminine Bayard. You engage yourself
with such ardor in everybody's wrongs."

When I returned from my afternoon's work a few days later, I found
Clelie again excited. She had been summoned to the first floor by
Madame.

"I went into the room," said Clelie, "and found the mother and daughter
together. Mademoiselle, who stood by the fire, had evidently been
weeping Madame was in an abrupt and angry mood. She wasted no words. 'I
want you to give her lessons,' she said, making an ungraceful gesture in
the direction of her daughter. 'What do you charge a lesson?' And on my
telling her, she engaged me at once. 'It's a great deal, but I guess I
can pay as well as other people,' she remarked."

A few of the lessons were given downstairs, and then Clelie preferred a
request to Madame.

"If you will permit Mademoiselle to come to my room, you will confer a
favor upon me," she said.

Fortunately, her request was granted, and so I used afterward to come
home and find Mademoiselle Esmeralda in our little _salon_ at work
disconsolately and tremulously. She found it difficult to hold her
pencil in the correct manner, and one morning she let it drop, and burst
into tears.

"Don't you see I'll never do it!" she answered, miserably. "Don't you
see I couldn't, even if my heart was in it, and it aint at all!"

She held out her little hands piteously for Clelie to look at. They
were well enough shaped, and would have been pretty if they had not been
robbed of their youthful suppleness by labor.

"I've been used to work," she said, "rough work all my life, and my
hands aint like yours."

"But you must not be discouraged, Mademoiselle," said Clelie gently.
"Time"--

"Time," interposed the girl, with a frightened look in her pretty gray
eyes.