The woman who would rule her household well, had need to be endowed by Heaven with almost every virtue. She should be quick to perceive and slow to act; not given to rash judgments, nor easily moved to anger. She should be patient and long-suffering. She should remember that she is an absolute autocrat in her small domain, and be merciful accordingly. Her servants are but after all as children, who have no claim to a parent’s care and affection. She can take the bread out of their mouths, and, if they have been happy with her, drive them forth from Eden into the cold bleak world which is all before them; she can make or mar their futures; she can be lenient, or she can be harsh. She can be cruel—like the servant who, going out loosed from his lord’s presence, seized upon his fellow-servant, crying, “Pay me that thou owest;” or she can have compassion on their infirmities, remembering that the God of the whole earth has had compassion on her. She can be hard and exacting, demanding full measure and strict change; she can hold the scales steadily, and if there be a feather’s weight too little, cast them out; or she may be merciful as her Father in Heaven is merciful, and be very patient towards those who try her patience, and her temper, and her Christianity daily. She can be the model, managing, worldly mistress, or she may be the mistress which the Lord shall approve when He cometh to His kingdom. She can resolve the whole question into one of work and wage, or she can go further, and strive so to rule herself, and those she has under her, that when the long account comes to be made up—that account between rich and poor, which will never be closed till eternity—the Great Judge shall say she has done her feeble best, that although only one talent was given unto her, it was not buried in the ground, but put out to usury, returning ample interest. So far, this story has, been written in vain, if any reader have failed to comprehend that Heather Dudley was one of those women, “the eyes of whose maidens turned unto her;” and it will, therefore, readily be conceived, that although many persons would have incontinently turned Priscilla Dobbin out of the house, and refused to sleep another night under the same roof with such a double-faced, artful little minx, Mrs. Dudley felt sorry for the girl and inclined to make allowances. She had loved Bessie greatly, and she was but young. Her life was all before her, and Heather could not reconcile it to her conscience to mar it at the outset. She had her talk with the girl, during the course of which Prissy was, after the manner of her class, silent, and apparently sulky. Nevertheless, she departed from the audience-chamber red around the nose, watery about her eyes, and generally depressed in her spirits.