"Who is she?" languidly asked Mary, letting her work fall on her knees. "Never you mind, Miss," tartly replied Jane. "Just stitch on, will you?" Mrs. Brown was again down on the unlucky absent one. "Serve her right," she said, benevolently. "Serve her right--the set up thing! Oh! there's Rachel. Lawk, Rachel! what a pity you ain't been here! You never heard such a story as has come out about that little staymaker, Humpy, as I call her. Why, she's been a making love to--la! but I can't help laughing, when I think of it; and it's all true, every word of it; aint it, Mrs. Smith?" Mrs. Smith loftily acquiesced. "Oh! my little room--my little room!" inwardly sighed Rachel, as she sat down to her work. She hoped that the story was, at least, finished and over; but if it was, the commentaries upon it were only beginning, and Heaven knows if they were not various and abundant. Rachel did her best to abstract herself; to hear, and not listen. She succeeded so well that she only awoke from her dream when Mrs. Brown said to her, "Well, Rachel, why don't you answer, then?" Rachel looked up, with a start, and said, in some trepidation, "Answer! I didn't hear you speak, ma'am." "Didn't you now!" knowingly observed Mrs. Brown, winking on the rest of the company. "No, ma'am, I did not, indeed," replied Rachel, earnestly. "Bless the girl!" said Mrs. Brown, laughing outright; "why, you must be growing deaf." "I hope not," said Rachel, rather perplexed; "yet, perhaps, I am; for, indeed, I did not hear you." "La, Miss Gray! don't you see they are making fun of you?" impatiently observed Jane. "Why, Mrs. Brown hadn't been a saying anything at all." Rachel reddened a little, and there was a general laugh at her expense. The joke was certainly a witty one. But Mrs. Gray, who was a touchy woman, was not pleased; and no sooner were her amiable visitors gone, than she gave it to Rachel for having been laughed at with insolent rudeness. "If you were not sich a simpleton," she said, in great anger, "people wouldn't dare to laugh at you. They wouldn't take the liberty. No one ever laughed at me, I can tell you. No Mrs. Brown; no, nor no Mrs. Smith either. But you! why, they'll do anythink to you." Rachel looked up from her work into her mother's face. It rose to her lips to say--"If you were not the first to make little of me, would others dare to do so?" but she remembered her lonely forsaken childhood, and bending once more over her task, Rachel held her peace. "I want to go to bed," peevishly said Mary. "Then go, my dear," gently replied Rachel. "You'll spoil that girl," observed Mrs. Gray, with great asperity. "She is not strong," answered Rachel; "and I promised Mr. Jones she should not work too much." "Not much fear of that," drily said Jane, as the door closed on Mary.