"No," said Nelly, "not a bit of it. That's all a pretence about the young ladies' education. They have had some losses out, there away, in them sugar-mines, and they won't be at home these two years," replied Nelly, with the dogmatical air of one whose superior information could not be doubted. "That's sad news, Mrs. Nelly," interposed Mr. Otley; "'tis a wonder Mr. Williams did not say a word about it yesterday, when I called, about stocking up that hedge." "The news only came this morning; but I believe you will find it's true enough; though people think an old woman can know nothing." "I'm loth to credit such bad news about such good people," answered Mr. Otley. "They may be good, for aught I know to the contrary; but I am sure it is little enough I have profited by their goodness." "Oh, Nelly!" exclaimed Susan, "did not they keep you always in employment; and if you had nothing else to do, did they not bid you always be knitting stockings for them, which they afterwards gave to the poor?" "And much good that did me! I was none the warmer. They paid me for my work, sure enough; and what thanks do I owe them for that? It would be a pretty thing indeed, if gentlefolks ordered goods of poor people, and then cheated them out of their money." "Oh, Nelly!" cried Susan, and she longed to add, "how ungrateful!" but she remembered she was old and sick, and she restrained herself. "I always thought it would come to this. I always thought the 'squire would run himself into debt with the warm house he kept, and his dances on the green to giddy boys and girls;"--(Susan sighed)--"and then the grand company that visited at the Park! I am sure it has kept me awake many a night to hear the carriages rolling by after a dinner-party. It won't do to burn the candle at both ends. I have always said so; but nobody minds me." "I am sure, Nelly," interposed Mrs. Otley, "Mr. Mowbray saw no more company than was proper and becoming for a gentleman of his birth and connexions: and it would have been a sin and a shame if he had let his daughters mope at home without allowing them to see a little of the world; and as for his losses in his West India property, he could not foresee that his crop of sugar-canes would fail, or that a hurricane would ruin his plantations." "I know nothing about sugar-canes, nor hurricanes, not I; but I know that if they are things that pay one year, and don't pay the next, you should reckon accordingly, and not live as if sugar-mines paid every year as regular as sheep or corn." "Not sugar-mines, Nelly. Sugar grows in plantations." "Sugar-mines, or salt-mines, it is all one to me; that's no business of mine," replied Nelly doggedly, "and it makes little difference to me. If them losses out, there away, hinder the 'squire's family from coming home, and I have no regular sale for my stockings, it matters little what keeps them in foreign parts."