The company of sewing-girls collected together in this school-room was of course a very miscellaneous one. The faces were changing almost daily, some by expiration of their apprenticeship, and some by being sent away as troublesome, incompetent, or vicious. All who left us had their places immediately filled from a list of candidates which the teacher had in a book, so that, while one throng of learners was departing, another was entering. If one could have gone into the domestic history of all the girls who came and went even during my short stay, he would have found some experiences to surpass anything that has ever occurred to me. I do not know how it happened, but most of these girls were quite desirous of making my acquaintance, and of their own motion became extremely sociable. I was sociable in return, from an instinct of my nature. I never lost anything by thus meeting them halfway in the endeavor to be polite and affable, but on the contrary learned much, gained much, and secured invaluable friends. Nor did I ever repel the amicable approaches even of the most humble, as I very early discovered that none were so ignorant as not to be able to communicate some little item of knowledge to which I had been a stranger. There was a lady among these pupils who was in many respects very different from all the others. I think her age must have been at least thirty-five. I did not ask if it were so; and as she never mentioned it herself, that circumstance was hint enough for me to remain silent. I never could understand why so many women are so amusingly anxious to conceal their age, sometimes becoming quite affronted when even a conjecture is hazarded on the subject. This lady was unmarried; perhaps that may have been one reason for her unwillingness to speak of her age. But was not I unmarried, and what repugnance have I ever felt to avowing mine?