Perhaps it is true that women have a natural inclination to calculate in this poor way. She did not care a straw for the cultivation of Law as Law--but that he should be made good for something, get a good situation, have some hopes of comfort and prosperity. For herself, what did it matter? She never could know enough to teach, and Captain Despard would not let his daughter teach; besides, she had plenty to do at home, and could not be spared. She could read and write, and do her accounts, the latter very well indeed; and she had learned to “play” from her mother, and she could sew, rather badly at first, rather well now by dint of practice. What did a girl want more? But Lottie discovered now that a girl might want more. “Is there any place where they will teach you to sing without money?” she said one day to old Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, her next-door neighbour, the old lady of all her neighbours whom Lottie liked best. “Me jewel!” cried the old lady; “is it without paying youre meaning? They send an account if you do but look at them here, me dear.” “All of them?” said Lottie; “for I can sing, and I should like to learn to sing; but, you know, I can’t pay--much----” “I know; nothing at all, if you’re like us, me honey. But maybe you’re better off. O’Shaughnessy, we don’t make a secret of it, rose from the ranks, and we’ve never had a penny--I don’t care who knows it--barring our pay.” “We are not like that,” said Lottie, drawing herself up. “Papa was always a gentleman” (“Then I don’t give much for such gentlemen,” murmured the other Chevalier’s lady, under her breath), “and we have a little. That is--I mean, that he has a little--papa has a little”--the girl said on the edge of a confidence; and then stopped suddenly short. “It don’t do much for the children, I’ll go bail,” said the old lady. “That’s the worst of fine gentlemen, me dear. O’Shaughnessy he asks me for a shillin’ when he wants it, bless him--and that’s the only way when there’s small pay. Singing, is it? If you’re always to make such a stand on being a lady, me friend Lottie, I don’t see how I can help you; but if you will come in free and comfortable, and take a dish of tay when Rowley’s there--oh, to be sure, puff! my lady’s off--but there’s no harm in him; and he’ll make you die with laughin’ at him, him and his airs--but they tell me he has the best voice and the best method of any of the lay clerks.” “A singing man!” “Well, and that was what ye wanted!” said the old woman. “You know as well as me, Miss Lottie, there’s no singin’ woman here.”