Dimmock spoke very spitefully, and I knew that she did so because I gave myself superior airs over her daughters. I daresay it was wrong of me to do so, but I couldn't help it, they were such mean things! One of them let a girl in school be beaten for something that she did, and I knew it. But we used to quarrel about all sorts of things, and of course Mrs. Dimmock always took their parts, so that you may guess, daddy, I was not very happy. I heard sufficient of the conversation between my aunt and Mrs. Dimmock to make me tingle all over. It served me right, for listeners never _do_ hear any good of themselves; but it was as well I did hear, notwithstanding, as you will see presently. My aunt was in arrears for my board and lodging, and she was compelled to hear patiently--for my sake, I felt it!--all the hard things that Mrs. Dimmock said to her. 'I shall be able to pay you by and by,' my aunt said, O, so humbly! 'I can't afford to wait till by and by, ma'am,' Mrs. Dimmock answered, 'and I can't live on promises--they're like pie-crusts, made to be broken. It is a shame that such a big girl as her should be eating charity bread.' Just think, daddy, how I felt when I heard that! 'If she can't pay for her bread-and-butter, let her work for it, if she ain't too fine and proud. If she wants to live on charity, she must go somewhere else and get it; I can't afford to give it to her.' I think, daddy, that if I had been on fire, I. couldn't have run out of the house faster than I did. I had an idea at first of running clean away, but the thought of how kind my aunt had been to me prevented me. Instead of that, I watched for her, and saw her come out of the house and look anxiously about for me. She was always very pale, but her face was whiter than I had ever seen it before. She brightened up when she saw me, and I drew her a long way from the house before I would let her talk. When she began, how I pitied her! She couldn't get along at all, and would have gone away without telling me anything, if I hadn't said that I was in the passage and heard her and Mrs. Dimmock speaking together about me. She looked so frightened when I told her, that I was frightened myself; she was dreadfully anxious to know all that I had heard, and seemed to be relieved that I hadn't heard any more. I supposed that Mrs. Dimmock had been saying worse things of me than I had already heard, and I wasn't sorry that I went out of the house when I did. 'And so you are poor, aunty,' I said to her, 'and I have made you so!' 'No, my dear, no, Lizzie, no, my darling!' she said eagerly. 'You haven't made me so; I had enough, more than enough, and to spare, and I was putting by money for you, my dearest, and saving up for you. But like a foolish woman I put it into a bank, and they have robbed me and a thousand other poor creatures. The bankers were thieves, my darling, thieves! and there's no law to touch them, and I can't get my poor little bit