In due time the answers to the advertisement arrived--in a sack, for they numbered about four hundred. “Oh, how will you ever be able to read them all!” exclaimed Fan, staring in a kind of dismay at the pile, where Miss Starbrow had emptied them on the carpet. “I have no such mad intention,” said the other with a laugh, and turning them over with her pretty slippered foot. “As a rule people that answer advertisements--especially women--are fools. If you advertise for a piece of old point lace, about a thousand people who have not got such a thing will write to say that they will sell you wax flowers, old books, ostrich feathers, odd numbers of _Myra's Journal_, or any rubbish they may have by them; I dare say that most of the writers of these letters are just as wide of the mark. Sit here at my feet, Fan; and you shall open the letters for me and read the addresses. No, not that way with your fingers. If you stop to tear them to pieces, like a hungry cat tearing its meat, it will take too long. Use the paper-knife, and open them neatly and quickly.” Fan began her task, and found scores of letters from the suburbs of London and all parts of the kingdom, from Land's End to the north of Scotland; and in nine cases out of ten after reading the address her mistress would say, “Tear it twice across, and throw it into the basket, Fan.” It seemed a pity to Fan to tear them up unread; for some were so long and so beautifully written, with pretty little crests at the top of the page; but Mary knew her own mind, and would not relent so far as even to look at one of these wasted specimens of calligraphic art. In less than an hour's time the whole heap had been disposed of, with the exception of fifteen or twenty letters selected for consideration on account of their addresses. These Miss Starbrow carefully went over, and finally selecting one she read it aloud to Fan. It was from a Mrs. Churton, an elderly lady, residing with her husband, a retired barrister, and her daughter, in their own house at a small place called Eyethorne, in Wiltshire. She offered to take the girl into her house, treat her as her own child, and give her instruction, for seventy pounds a year. The tuition would be undertaken by the daughter, who was well qualified for such a task, and could teach languages--Latin, German, and French were mentioned; also mathematics, geology, history, music, drawing, and a great many other branches of knowledge, both useful and ornamental. Fan listened to this part of the letter with a look of dismay on her face, which made Miss Starbrow laugh. “Why, my child, what more can you want?” she said. “Don't you think it a little too much, Mary?” she returned with some distress, which made the other laugh again.