Mrs. Hesketh blushed a little. “I’ve scarcely sat down all day till now; I’ve been having a regular clean-out. You can’t think how the dust gets into all the corners with the fires and all that. And I’ve just been at it from morning till night. I tried to read a little bit when I had my tea. And it’s a beautiful book, Miss Dora, but I was that tired.” “It can scarcely take a whole day,” said Dora, looking round her, “to clean out this one little room.” “Oh, but you can’t think what a lot of work there is, when you go into all the corners. And then I get tired, and it makes me stupid.” “Well,” said Dora, with suppressed impatience, “but when you become a lady, as you say, with servants to do all you want, how will you be able to take up a proper position if you have never read anything?” “Oh, as for that,” said Mrs. Hesketh in a tone of relief, “that can’t be for a long time yet; and you feel different when you’re old to what you do when you’re young.” “But I am young,” said Dora. She changed the subject, however, more or less, by her next question. “Are you really fond of sewing?” she said in an incredulous tone; “or rather, what are you most fond of? What should you like best to do?” “Oh!” said the little wife, with large open eyes and mouth--she fell off, however, into a sigh and added, “if one ever had what one wished most!” “And why not?” said inexperienced Dora. “At least,” she added, “it’s pleasant to think, even if you don’t have what you want. What should you like best?” “Oh,” said Mrs. Hesketh again, but this time with a long-drawn breath of longing consciousness, “I should like that we might have enough to live upon without working, and Alfred and me always to be together,--that’s what I should like best.” “Money?” cried Dora with irrepressible scorn. “Oh, Miss Dora, money! You can’t think how nice it would be just to have enough to live on. I should never, never wish to be extravagant, or to spend more than I had; just enough for Alfred to give up the shop, and not be bound down to those long hours any more!” “And how much might that be?” said Dora, with an air of grand yet indulgent magnificence, as if, though scorning this poor ideal, she might yet perhaps find it possible to bestow upon her friend the insignificant happiness for which she sighed. “Oh, Miss Dora, when you think how many things are wanted in housekeeping, and one’s dress, and all that--and probably more than us,” said Mrs. Hesketh, with a bright blush. She too looked at the girl as if it might have been within Dora’s power to give the modest gift. “Should you think it a dreadful lot,” said the young woman, “if I said two hundred a year?” “Two hundred pounds a year?” said Dora reflectively. “I think,” she added, after a pause, “father has more than twice as much as that.”