When the first grief of widowhood was over, Mrs. Stevens and her daughter, without any very definite plan, but drawn by that strange attraction that impels alike the helpless, the inexperienced, and the ambitious to the great centres of population, came up to London with the small sum of money which, after every debt had been scrupulously discharged, was left to her. Beyond that resource she had none, save the address of a first cousin who, report said, had grown very rich in trade, and to whom she hoped she might look for aid and advice. In this, however, she was speedily undeceived, for upon calling upon her cousin, and introducing herself and Kate, she was received by the withered old miser very curtly, and told that as he came up to London a poor boy with five and ninepence in his pocket, and had managed to get on fairly, she with fifty pounds in her pocket could do very well without help. Perhaps if the widow had let Kate plead her suit she might have fared better, for the old man patted Kate's back, and seemed to dip his hand in his pocket with the half intention of making her a present, but it was only a half intention, and the widow went away with a heavy heart, convinced that she must not look for assistance in that quarter. I need not tell what little I know of the efforts of Mrs. Stevens to find for herself a useful place in the great, busy, unfriendly, or at least, coldly-indifferent world of London-life--how she found thousands as eager and as anxious as herself--how, although she pinched and stinted, and denied herself every luxury, she saw her small stock of money silently wasting away, and no apparent means of getting more; all these things are unhappily so every-day and commonplace, such mere ordinary vulgar troubles, that every body knows them, and nobody cares to hear more about them. At last one day, after a weary walk, under a scorching sky, in search of employment, the widow and her daughter saw in the window of an outfitter's shop, the welcome announcement "good shirt hands wanted." So the widow and Kate entered, and with some little trembling saw the person whose business it was to give work to the needlewomen, and made known their errand. Mr. Sturt, a sharp, rather rough man, who had the management of this department, said, "Yes, they did want 'hands,' but they required some one to become security for the work given out."