However, Miss Hawley was extremely sociable with me, though certainly old enough to be my mother, and made me the depositary of many incidents in her life. She was the eldest of three sisters, all orphans, all unmarried, all dependent on themselves for a living, and all, at one time, so absurdly proud, that, in the struggle to keep up appearances, and conceal from their acquaintances the fact that they were doing this or that thing for a maintenance, they subjected themselves to privations which embarrassed much of their efforts, while they failed to secure the concealment they sought. Though women of undoubted sense and excellent education, yet they acted as foolishly as the ostrich, which, when hunted to cover, thrusts his head into a bush, and is weak enough to think that his whole body is concealed, when it stands out not only a target, but a fixed one, for the hunter's rifle. So these women took it for granted, that, if they ran to the cover of a chamber from which all visitors should be excluded, their acquaintances would be ignorant of how they occupied their time, or by what means they lived. Yet they could not fail to be aware that everybody who knew anything of them knew their history also,--that it was notorious that their father, a merchant, had died not worth a cent, and that they had been compelled to abandon the fine house in which he had kept up a style so expensive as greatly to increase the hardship of their subsequent destitution. Like a thousand others, he had lived up to the limit of his income. No doubt, all of them might have been well married, but for the lavish habits as to fashion and expenditure in which they indulged themselves. These might be afforded by their father so long as his annual gains continued large. But the many worthy young men who visited and admired them refused to entertain the idea of marriage with girls whose mere personal outfit cost a sum equal to the year's salary of a first-class clerk, or the annual profits of one who had just commenced business for himself. They held that the girl whose habits were so expensive should bring with her a fortune large enough to support them, or remain as she was, taking the sure consequences on her own shoulders, and not throwing them on theirs. They were in fact afraid of girls who manifestly had no prudence, no economy, and who appeared to be wholly unconscious that the only admiration worth securing is that of the good and wise.