Mary threw her arms round Bessy’s neck, and began to cry, for this little mark of affection went to her heart; she had been so longing for a word or a sign of love in her suffering. “Come, Molly,” said Jem, “don’t cry like a baby;” but he spoke very kindly. “What’s the matter? the old headache come back? Never mind. Go to bed, and it will be better in the morning.” “But I can’t go to bed. I don’t know my lesson!” Mary looked happier, though the tears were in her eyes. “I know mine,” said Bill, triumphantly. “Come here,” said Jem. “There! I’ve time enough to whittle away at this before mother comes back. Now let’s see this difficult lesson.” Jem’s help soon enabled Mary to conquer her lesson; but, meanwhile, Jenny and Bill had taken to quarrelling in spite of Bessy’s scolding, administered in small sharp doses, as she looked up from her all-absorbing knitting. “Well,” said Tom, “with this riot on one side, and this dull lesson on the other, and Bessy as cross as can be in the midst, I can understand what makes a man go out to spend his evenings from home.” Bessy looked up, suddenly wakened up to a sense of the danger which her mother had dreaded. Bessy thought it was very fortunate that it fell on a Saturday, of all days in the week, that Mrs. Scott wanted her; for Mary would be at home, who could attend to the household wants of everybody; and so she satisfied her conscience at leaving the post of duty that her mother had assigned to her, and that she had promised to fulfil. She was so eager about her own plans that she did not consider this; she did not consider at all, or else I think she would have seen many things to which she seemed to be blind now. When were Mary’s lessons for Monday to be learnt? Bessy knew as well as we do, that lesson-learning was hard work to Mary. If Mary worked as hard as she could after morning school she could hardly get the house cleaned up bright and comfortable before her brothers came home from the factory, which “loosed” early on the Saturday afternoon; and if pails of water, chairs heaped up one on the other, and tables put topsy-turvy on the dresser, were the most prominent objects in the house-place, there would be no temptation for the lads to stay at home; besides which, Mary, tired and weary (however gentle she might be), would not be able to give the life to the evening that Bessy, a clever, spirited girl, near their own age, could easily do, if she chose to be interested and sympathising in what they had to tell. But Bessy did not think of all this. What she did think about was the pleasant surprise she should give her mother by the warm and pretty covering for her feet, which she hoped to present her with on her return home. And if she had done the duties she was pledged to on her mother’s departure first, if they had been compatible with her plan of being a whole day absent from home, in order to earn the money for the wools, the project of the surprise would have been innocent and