"I suppose we know about all that," said Ella, haughtily. _She_ to teach her!--the child of charity to presume to insinuate a want in her! The idea was intolerable. She went and sat down at a table at some little distance, and pretended to be busy playing with her bird, whose golden cage stood upon it; but, as she did so, she listened in spite of herself to the following conversation, passing between Clementina and Matty. "I am so uncomfortable," the young girl was saying, rather fretfully; "I don't know what to do with myself. I try this thing and try that thing, and nothing gives me any ease or amusement; and I think it very hard--I can't help thinking it hard--that I should have to suffer every thing, and Ella, there, nothing; and then, Nurse makes such a favorite of _her_, and nobody in the wide world cares for me. Oh, I am so miserable, sometimes!" "I used to be like you, once, Miss," said Matty. At which Ella gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. But Matty did not regard it; and she went on and said, "Look at my face, Miss Clementina; it's very horrid and ugly, I know, and I don't wonder as Nurse calls me rubbish, and hates to see me in her nice nursery. Many can't help feeling like that. Do you know how this was done?" "No. I suppose small-pox; but it's not like that, for your face is all cut to pieces. I don't know how it was done." "It was done by the dreadful agony of fire. When I was but a little creature, living, O Miss! in such a place--five families of there were in one low, dark, nasty room, and, O Miss! it was like the bad place, indeed it was--such swearing and blasphemy when the men come home drunk, and worse, worse, when the women did so too! Such quarrelling, and fighting, and cursing, and abusing--and the poor children, knocked about at such times anyhow. But my mother never got drunk. She was a poor feeble creature, and mostly sat at home all day crooning, as they call it, by the fire--for they kept a good big fire in winter in the room. And then, when father come home he was generally very bad in liquor, and seeking a quarrel with anything--for something he must have to quarrel with. Well! One evening--O! I shall never forget it--a cold, sleety, winter day it was, and the wind rushing up our court, and the snow falling thick, and the blackened drops, and great lumps of snow coming splashing down, and the foul water oozing in under the doorsill, and all such a mess; and the poor, tired, or half-drunk creatures coming in splashed and dripping, and quarrelling for the nighest places to the fire, and swearing all the time to make one's hair stand on end; and father coming in, all wet and bedabbled, and his hat stuck at the top of his head, and his cheeks red, and his eyes staring, though he was chattering with the cold. Mother was at her place by the fire, and he comes up in a rage, like, to turn her out; and she sitting sulky and wouldn't move; and then there was a quarrel; and he begun to beat