So saying, mother folded a towel round its neck, to catch the falling drops, and went for bread and butter, of which the child consumed a quantity that, was absolutely appalling. To crown all, the ungrateful little thing would not so much as look at me from that moment, but clung to mother, turning its back upon me in supreme contempt. Moral.-Mothers occasionally know more than their daughters do. Chapter 6 VI. JANUARY 24. A Message came yesterday morning from Susan Green to the effect that she had had a dreadful fall, and was half killed. Mother wanted to set off at once to see her, but I would not let her go, as she has one of her worst colds. She then asked me to go in her place. I turned up my nose at the bare thought, though I dare say it turns up enough on its own account. "Oh, mother!" I said, reproachfully "that dirty old woman!" Mother made no answer, and I sat down at the piano, and played a little. But I only played discords. "Do you think it is my duty to run after such horrid old women?" I asked mother, at last. "I think, dear, you must make your own duties," she said kindly. "I dare say that at your age I should have made a great deal out of my personal repugnance to such a woman as Susan, and very little out of her sufferings." I believe I am the most fastidious creature in the world. Sick-rooms with their intolerable smells of camphor, and vinegar and mustard, their gloom and their whines and their groans, actually make me shudder. But was it not just such fastidiousness that made Cha-no, I won't utter his name----that made somebody weary of my possibilities? And has that terrible lesson really done me no good? JAN. 26.-No sooner had I written the above than I scrambled into my cloak and bonnet, and flew, on the wings of holy indignation, to Susan Green. Such wings fly fast, and got me a little out of breath. I found her lying on that nice white bed of hers, in a frilled cap and night-gown. It seems she fell from her ladder in climbing to the dismal den where she sleeps, and lay all night in great distress with some serious internal injury. I found her groaning and complaining in a fearful way. "Are you in such pain?" I asked, as kindly as I could. "It isn't the pain," she said, "it isn't the pain. It's the way my nice bed is going to wreck and ruin, and the starch all getting out of my frills that I fluted with my own hands. And the doctor's bill, and the medicines; oh, dear, dear, dear!" Just then the doctor came in. After examining her, he said to a woman who seemed to have charge of her: "Are you the nurse?" "Oh, no, I only stepped in to see what I could do for her." "Who is to be with her to-night, then?" Nobody knew. "I will send a nurse, then," he said. "But some one else will be needed also," he added, looking at me. "I will stay," I said. But my heart died within me. The doctor took me aside. "Her injuries are very serious," he said. "If she has any friends, they ought to be sent for."