"Everybody that aint rich, and some that be. I don't think they had ought to. There's enough without 'em. Twelve hundred and fifty in this school." "Twelve hundred and fifty children!" "All that. Enough, aint it? But they say the teaching's first rate. You want to send Rotha? You can't get along without her at home, can you? Not unless you can get somethin' better than them buttonholes." "Mother," said Rotha when Mrs. Marble had gone, "you wouldn't send me to that school, would you? That's where all the poor children go. I don't think anybody but poor people live all about here." "Then it is a proper place for us. What are we but poor people, Rotha?" "But mother, we were not poor people at Medwayville? And losing our farm and our home and all, don't make any difference." "Don't it?" "No, mother, not in us. We are not that sort of people. You wouldn't send me to such a school?" "Take care, my child. 'The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich;' and one is not better than the other." "One is better off than the other," said Rotha. "Mother, how comes aunt Serena to be rich and you to be poor?" Mrs. Carpenter hesitated and seemed to choose her words. "It was because of the way she married," she answered at last. "I married a poor man, and her marriage brought her into riches. I would not exchange with her for all the world, Rotha. I have had much the best of it. You see your judgment is not worth much." Rotha was not satisfied by this statement, and as time wore on she thought she had less and less reason. Mrs. Marble did succeed in finding some different work with better pay for her lodger; that is, she got her the private sewing of a family that paid her at the rate of seventy five cents for a gentleman's shirt, with stitched linen bosom and cuffs. It was better than the buttonhole making; yet even so, Mrs. Carpenter found that very close and diligent application was necessary, if she would pay her rent and pay her way. She could hardly do without Rotha's assistance. If she tried, with natural motherly feeling, to spare her child, she made her fingers rough and unfit for delicate work. It would not do. Rotha's hands must go into the hot water, and handle the saucepan, and the broom, and the box-iron. Ironing made Mrs. Carpenter's hands tremble; and she must not be hindered in her work or made to do it slowly, if she and her child were to live. And by degrees Rotha came thus to be very busy and her days well filled up. All errands were done by her; purchases at the market and the grocery shop and the thread and needle store. The care of the two little rooms was hers; the preparation of meals, the clearing of tables. It was better than to be idle, but Rotha sighed over it and Mrs. Carpenter sometimes did the same. If she had known just what a public school is, at all hazards she would not have kept her child at home; Rotha should have had so much education as she could get there. But Mrs.