"Ay, that's just it. It would take a heap of bits of pictures to make a living. I must say I think you was a fool not to look out for something steady right off, when the ladies as could have recommended you was here; this will be hard work and poor work." "Nevertheless, I am determined to try it," said Ella, firmly, though sadly. "You cannot tell the imprisonment a great house is to me; besides, you forget poor Sir Peter Fergusson's generosity. I can afford to board with you for six or eight months, and then, if all my efforts to earn my bread by my art fail, I can still ask Miss Walker's help. I am not in your way, good friend, am I?" "Well, no. I am not that selfish, like many, as would try to keep you here when it would be better for you to be away; but you are not like other girls, the place is different when you are in it; and the trifle you pay is more than the trifle difference you make. It was about yourself--what is best for you--I was thinking." "Do not think of me," returned Ella, placing her elbow on the table and resting her head on her hand despondently; "I am so weary of myself." "Now there is something come to you quite different from what used to be. And you are that pale and thin, and don't eat nothing. There's some of those grandedees" (such was Mrs. Kershaw's pronunciation) "been talking nonsense, and you have been, and gone, and been fool enough to heed them, in spite of all the talking to I gave you before you went to Sir Peter's. They are all alike. If you was a hangel, with a wing sprouting out of each shoulder, and as beautiful as--as anythink, the poorest scrap of a gentleman among them that hadn't as much gumption as would earn a crust costermongering would laugh at the notion of putting a ring on your finger. No, no; as much love as you like without that. I knows 'em, the proud, upsetting, lazy lot, I do;" and Mrs. Kershaw stopped with a jerk, more for want of breath than lack of matter. "You need not distress yourself," returned Ella, with a smile of quiet scorn. "No one insulted me at Brosedale; and I _did_ keep your good advice in mind. I am depressed, nor can you wonder at it when you think of the sad scenes I went through with poor Donald." "Well, well, anyhow you won't open your mind to me, though I fancy I am your best friend, and your only friend into the bargain, though I say it as shouldn't," retorted Mrs. Kershaw, with some asperity. "You are, indeed," said Ella, sweetly. "So instead of quarrelling with me for not telling you a romantic tale, tell me some of your own affairs; any one about the rooms yet?" "I believe," said Mrs. Kershaw, a shade less severely--"I believe I'm let." This startling announcement did not in the least move Miss Rivers from her gravity; she merely observed, sympathetically, "I am very glad."