“Bless your heart, cousin, the coals we got did not last half the winter through; for my husband likes a good fire when he can get it, and always expected to find one in the grate when he came home from the Leopard, however late at night it might be; and I had to sell one of the blankets presently. The other, on the bed there, is the only one we have till winter, when I hope to get a new one, if the ladies are not too particular about my having had two already. But, really, it tries one’s patience to wait upon them ladies. Do you know I am disappointed again about the bag of linen against my confinement. I may be down any day now, and every bag is engaged, so that they can’t promise with any certainty. So I must just take my chance for getting through somehow.” “And how is your baby provided?” “O, they gave me a few trifles for it, which will do till I get about again, and can carry it to show how poorly it is off.” “Well,” said Mrs. Marshall, “I do wonder you can bear to live from hand to mouth in that way. You got your first set of baby-linen at the same time that I did, and with your own money; and why yours should not have lasted as well as mine, I can’t think. Mine are not all worn out yet, and I always managed to replace, by timely saving, those that were. However, if you can’t clothe your own children, I don’t wonder so much that you will not feed your sister’s. Poor things! must they go to the workhouse?” “Unless you choose to take them all, cousin. So wonderful a manager as you are, perhaps you might contrive it.” Mrs. Marshall shook her head mournfully. She had not lodging room for more than two girls among her own, and could not have engaged that her husband’s rent should be ready if more than two in addition were to share their daily meals. As it was, they must give up one dish of meat a week, and make some other reductions of the same kind. “Better ask the gentry to help you, at once,” said Mrs. Bell; “but I suppose you are too proud?” “We will try what our own charity can do before we ask it from those who have less concern in the matter,” said Mrs. Marshall. “There is one thing I mean to ask, however, because I cannot anyhow get it for them myself; and that is, to have them taught like my own children. Poor Sally must learn to knit while she has some eyesight left.” “Which of the others do you mean to take?” enquired Mrs. Bell, as if quite unconcerned in the matter.