"Not entirely. We three girls, Abby, Laura, and myself, have almost three hundred dollars a year between us. That is enough to provide as with clothes, but it will not be quite as much when we finish going to school. So Abby and I stay at uncle Merton's, and my aunt Dimsden has adopted Laura, and educates her at home." Olive paused a little, and then went on. "Uncle Merton is very kind, and I always get on nicely with him. Aunt is kind too, at least in all essentials, and I am very much attached to her. But she naturally sides with Charlotte, and never imagines that she can do any thing wrong. Then aunt is proud. She was very indignant at my mother, for marrying beneath her, as she thought, and she thinks I am just like my father. I hope I am," continued Olive, coloring with a justifiable pride; "I should not wish to resemble a better man." "But in spite of all this I should do very well, if it were not for Charlotte. She renders my life miserable by her everlasting jealousy and suspicion. Even that I could put up with, but this feeling that I am only a dependent, and have no home of my own except upon sufferance—that I may be looked upon as an intruder and a burden—it is that which embitters every moment of my life." "How does Abby bear it?" asked Helen. "Why, Helen, you know how Abby is? Nothing ever disturbs her. I have heard aunt scold her half an hour at a time, so that if it had been me, I should have felt like drowning myself almost, and she would not care any more for it than though the old cat had mewed at her. It is just so when Mrs. Granger finds fault with her. I wish I had her temper, I am sure." Helen had her doubts whether Olive would be, upon the whole, improved by having her sister's indifference, but she did not express them. "I wonder, Olive," she said, after a few moments' silence, "that you do not at once take measures to render yourself independent." "How do you mean?" asked Olive. "How would I?" "Very easily. You have had every advantage of education so far, and you say you expect to be in school at least half a year longer. What hinders you from preparing yourself thoroughly, and thus engaging in teaching?" Olive looked as though she had received a perfectly new idea. "I never thought of that," said she; "I wonder if I could." "Why not? A great many people undertake it, who are by no means equal to you in capacity or advantages, and are successful." "But it is a great drudgery, Helen." "That depends upon circumstances, my dear. That teaching must always be hard work, I allow, but it seems to me that it is very possible to raise it above the character of drudgery." "How?" "By putting one's whole heart and soul into it, as many teachers do. Witness Mrs. Granger and Miss Lee, and our good Professor De V. But, even allowing that it is hard work, is it not better to work hard, and be your own mistress, than to live in leisure and luxury, dependent upon another, however kind and considerate that other may be?"