To this end she used to buy _The Times_, and the other daily papers, and search their columns with a view to finding a rapid and easy way of making a fortune. According to these same papers, nothing in the world was so simple. You had only to send fourteen stamps to somebody with an address in an obscure street, to learn the golden secret of “realising a competence without hindrance to present employment.” “As our present employment consists generally in sitting looking at the fire, with our hands clasped, wondering where the next quarter’s rent is to come from,” she remarked to her mother, who looked upon these exercises as trivial, “it wouldn’t matter if we were hindered in it!” Although Mrs. Abercarne felt convinced that the brilliant prospect was illusory, and the work offered would be something inconsistent with the dignity of a gentlewoman, she was always ready to supply the necessary fourteen stamps, and she waited with quite as much anxiety as her daughter for the answers they received to their applications. These answers were, unfortunately, nearly all of the same kind. The applicant for the fortune was to sell small and, for the most part, useless articles on commission among his or her friends. “And you know, mamma,” commented Chris, sorrowfully, as she looked at a pair of aluminium studs which had been sent in return for the latest fourteen stamps, “as our commission is only threepence on each pair, if we had forty thousand friends and each friend bought a pair of studs from us, that would be only four hundred and ninety-eight pounds ten shillings! I’ve worked it out, and that isn’t what I should call a fortune, after all!” Her mother sighed, and then said, rather petulantly, that she had known those advertisements were only nonsense, and she hoped she would not want to waste any more money in that way. “No, mother,” said Chris gently. And then the blood rushed up into her face, as her eye caught sight in the columns of the newspaper before her, of an advertisement of a different kind. “If I only dared!” she thought as she threw a sly glance at her mother’s worried face. But she did not dare, until presently she saw a tear drop suddenly on to her mother’s dark dress. In a moment Chris was on her knees. Her pretty, round young face was full of eagerness, as well as of sympathy, and in the touch of her arms, as they closed round her mother’s neck, there was the clinging caress of one who entreats. “Mother--mother!” whispered she breathlessly, “don’t be angry--you mustn’t. Only--only I have something to say--something you must see. Look here!” and she thrust the newspaper into Mrs. Abercarne’s hands, and placed the lady’s white fingers on a certain paragraph. “Read that!”