"Oh, mamma, how can I do anything?" asked Mabel earnestly. "Well, dear, at present I am afraid you can only help us by being as diligent as you can with your own lessons, that you may be able to teach Mary and the others by and by, so as to save us the expense of a governess and masters," said Mrs. Randolph. Mabel looked greatly disappointed. "Only teach Mary and the children!" she said. "My dear, it will be a great help to us—a great relief to me, when you can take this work off my hands. You might begin with some of the easy lessons now, if you wish. But I do not want to burden you while you are still learning yourself." But as she said it, Mrs. Randolph looked wistfully at her daughter, hoping she would offer to hear the children some of their lessons. But Mabel was in no hurry to undertake the post of governess to her little sisters. She craved some greater work than this, and she said: "Mamma, couldn't I do something else?" "Something else, Mabel!" repeated Mrs. Randolph. "What could a girl of fifteen do? But I must not stay talking any longer," she hastily added, "for Mary and the children will be waiting for me." Again she cast a wistful, lingering look at Mabel, hoping she would offer to take the children's lessons this morning. But Mabel was feeling too vexed and disappointed to look at her mother, but sat toying with the pen she had been using until her mother left the room. Then she leaned her head down and burst into tears. "It is hard," she sobbed. "I do want to be useful, and yet it seems that I am not to do anything except learn lessons." She tore up the letter she had written to Mrs. Rose, and then wrote another, saying she must give up all her work but the Sunday-school class. For, truth to tell, she shrank from going to see either the rector or his wife just now, as her mother had suggested. When the letter was written, she took out a German exercise and sat down to study it, but soon fell to thinking over what her mother had told her concerning her father's business, and from this she began wishing she could have the assistance of first-class masters like her cousin Isabel had. But then there was all the difference in their circumstances, for while her uncle was every year growing richer, it seemed that they were only getting poorer as time went on. And yet it did seem hard. The more she thought of it, the harder it seemed. For while her cousin had all these educational advantages, she would never need to use them as Mabel herself would, for she had always heard that her aunt was a fashionable, fine lady, without a thought beyond her dress and her dinners and the furnishing of her house, and so Isabel's proficiency in music and languages would be no more than an extra adornment of no real service to herself or anybody else. And Mabel heaved a sigh of envy as she turned to her book again.