Though the change of condition was not much to Alison, the change of _position_ and that vacuity of the future were frightful to the poor girl; and in taking the situation for the sake of her father's name and his old family pride, though he was now in his grave, she had besought the vicar of Chilcote, in recommending her to Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, to conceal what she had ever been--nay, was still--the daughter of a baronet of Nova Scotia, whose diploma dated from 1625. The family of Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns consisted of three daughters, the eldest Miss Victoria, of whom more anon, was in her nineteenth year, and Alison's two pupils, Irene and Iseulte. Like the rest of the snobocracy of the metropolis she believed in double names, thus she figured in the royal Blue-Book as Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, a style of address which would have astonished her late husband, worthy old David or D. Jobbyns, as he called himself, when for many a year he was acquiring wealth as an industrious soap-boiler in Bow East, and when he married pretty little Sally Slumpkins, the barmaid at the 'Black Swan' in Mile-End Road, and when she little foresaw how wealthy a 'relict' she would be left. Pretty Sally, who had, of course, preferred the worthy soap-boiler to his rival the potman, had now, amid ease and much good living, expanded into a stout, blousy, and coarsely-featured matron, greatly puffed up by wealth, success, pride, and vanity. She always wore the richest materials and the most massive jewellery, and never omitted to figure in her open carriage in the Row, when weather permitted, and strove hard in everything to ape all the manners of the 'upper ten,' in which she was fully seconded by her eldest born, Miss Victoria S. De Jobbyns, a rather pretty, but very insipid girl, who wore her hair frizzed into her eyes, and had a nose more than retroussé, for though she was pretty, as we have said, her features were nevertheless of the genuine Cockney type. Alison took all her meals in the schoolroom with the children, and at the early hours which were directed for them. She was never in the drawing-room--'the British drawing-room,' that sanctum sacred to Mrs. De Jobbyns and her 'swell' visitors, as she called them, and when she thought it was 'rather the thing' to have afternoon tea in dragon blue and white crockery on a beautiful Chippendale table. And so, for thirty pounds per annum, Alison underwent this life of mortification. 'Thirty pound a-year, and her laundry work, my dear,' as Mrs. De Jobbyns informed her friend, Mrs. Popkins-Robbynson. 'That is very cheap for one evidently so accomplished,' said the latter. 'Very cheap, indeed; but she is such a good style for the children, you know; and really I think she must have been some one of--of--well, means once.' 'Why?' 'The richly laced under-garments she sends to the laundry would quite surprise you, my dear.' 'But won't her Scotch haccent spile the young 'uns?' observed Mr. Popkins-Robbynson.