"Beauty is nothing, child!" said her mother, though she herself was thinking at that moment that Winifred was a very creditable young person to have passing in and out of the house. "Good looks are only skin deep! Handsome is that handsome does!" "Then I think Winifred is the handsomest person I know!" returned sturdy little Betsey. "For I am sure she is the very best." CHAPTER XIII. THE CITY KNIGHT'S FAMILY. BRISTOL, at the time of our story, was the second city in England, and was famous for its wealth and luxury, for its West India trade and its sugar refineries, and, alas! also for the infamous slave-trade of which it was the centre, and which dealt in white skins as well as black ones, which not only brought in negroes, but carried out white boys and girls, stolen in the streets sometimes, never to be heard of again. It contained some splendid churches and several ancient endowed schools and hospitals, but the streets were so narrow that no carts were used save those drawn with dogs. And there was hardly a coach in the whole city, for the simple reason that there was no place in which to use one. Winifred found Lady Corbet in her own private sitting-room, and was reminded at once of Mrs. Alwright, not only by the basket of linen piled up to be darned and the huge bunch of keys in its little basket on the table, but even by something in the lady's manner of handling her needle and scissors. "Ah! So you have come betimes, Mrs. Evans!" was her greeting. "I am truly glad to see you! My girls are losing their time and running wild for want of something to do. I have no time to teach them myself, and my last governess has just married Sir John's managing clerk—and a good match for her too, poor thing, for she was an orphan, and Mr. Thomas Green is a good, kind, and steady man, though perhaps a thought elderly. And what can you teach, child—anything besides tapestry and cut-work? I suppose, for instance, you don't know anything about figures?" "Yes, madam," replied Winifred—she could not bring herself to say my lady—"I know how to cast accounts, and how to keep a household book." "Dear me, how glad I am!" exclaimed Lady Corbet, relaxing a little from the stateliness with which she had met Winifred, and which did not seem in the least natural to her. "Then I am sure you will help me now and then, won't you? Sir John he insists that I shall keep an account of all the expenses of the house, but what is the use, when I never can make my sums come out twice alike?" Winifred professed her willingness to render any assistance which might be needed.