"Yes," said Leila's elder brother John, a half-fledged young M.D., whose collegiate and medical education enabled him one morning to astound the family breakfast-party with the astute information, "that vinegar was an acid." "Yes, I wish she would take herself off into the country, too. I had as lief see a new doctor's sign put up next door, as to see her face of a Monday, over that wash-tub, in our kitchen. I wonder if she thinks salt an improvement in soap-suds, for the last time I saw her there she was dropping in the tears on her clothes, as she scrubbed, at a showering rate; another thing, mother, I wish you would give her a lesson or two, about those children of hers. The other day I met her Katy in the street with the shabbiest old bonnet on, and the toes of her shoes all rubbed white; and she had the impertinence to call me "_cousin_ John," in the hearing of young Gerald, who has just returned from abroad, and who dined with Lord Malden, in Paris. I could have wrung the little wretch's neck." "It _was_ provoking, John. I'll speak to her about it," said Mrs. Millet, "when she brings the coral pin." CHAPTER XLIX. Ruth, after a sleepless night of reflection upon her new project, started in the morning in quest of pupils. She had no permission to refer either to her father, or to Mrs. Millet; and such being the case, the very fact of her requesting this favor of any one less nearly related, would be, of itself, sufficient to cast suspicion upon her. Some of the ladies upon whom she called were "out," some "engaged," some "indisposed," and all indifferent; besides, people are not apt to entrust their children with a person of whom they know nothing; Ruth keenly felt this disadvantage. One lady on whom she called, "never sent her children where the teacher's own children were taught;" another preferred foreign teachers, "it was something to say that Alfred and Alfrida were 'finished' at Signor Vicchi's establishment;" another, after putting Ruth through the Catechism as to her private history, and torturing her with the most minute inquiries as to her past, present, and future, coolly informed her that "she had no children to send." After hours of fruitless searching, Ruth, foot-sore and heart-sore, returned to her lodgings. That day at dinner, some one of the boarders spoke of a young girl, who had been taken to the Hospital in a consumption, contracted by teaching a Primary School in ---- street.