"I have learned to call every female lady, who looks, acts, and talks like one. I hope my sister Elsie will not unlearn me. I found the lady at your table. I found her polite and diffident. She is not a forward minx. I walked with her to the parlor." "Yes, and she should have known better than to go there. Why did she not go back to her work?" "Elsie, she had done her work, and was waiting for your father to come home, so I could get some money to pay her; for I should be ashamed to keep her out of her money, or oblige her to call again. You had spent all the change I had in the house in your afternoon shopping. It was me that asked her to stay. It was me that asked her into the parlor. It was me, your mother, that asked her to sing one of those plaintive, sweet songs, I had heard her sing to the children while at work. It was you that urged her. What for? That she might fail. Elsie, Elsie, there is envy in your heart." "And she did sing. Was ever anything sweeter? I can repeat every word, for every note went down into my soul, and printed itself like the magnetic telegraph. Listen: "Oh, I was born where waters leaping, Cascade down the green, green hill; Oh, I was born where lambkins bleating, Leap along the clear, clear rill. Oh, I was born where lightning flashes, 'Luminate the green, green trees; Oh, I was born where the wild wind dashes, Raging o'er the deep, deep seas. "Oh, now I live amid confusion, Commerce wears an ugly frown; Oh, who would give that sweet seclusion, For all the pleasures of the town? Oh, how I love my native mountain, Hills and glens and all their flocks, Oh, how I love that sweet sweet fountain, Every tree, and all the rocks." "Smitten--smitten--my brother Walter smitten with my dress-maker! Faugh! I wonder if he went home with her, for he went out at the same time?" Yes, he did go home with her. It was her first false step. But ye that stand fast, do not censure this first step of her fall. She was young and handsome; so was he. Theirs were such hearts as nature sports with. Both were touched. He went home with her. They got into a stage at Seventeenth street to ride to Broome, for there was the home of the sewing girl. At Broome street he forgot to pull the check string. She did not notice it till the crowd of cars, carriages, and swarms of human beings, which fill up that great wide thoroughfare, Canal street, awakened her, from her reverie of wild thoughts, to the fact that they were already too far down. Before he could stop her she had pulled the string, and the driver held up and looked down through his little peep hole at his passengers, ready for his sixpenny fare, which he will contrive to make seven cents, if he makes change for you.