went slowly past, gazing at them, trying to say to herself that she hated the sight of them, Lily’s slayers! But her kind heart was too much for her quick temper, and as soon as they were out of sight, the little dressmaker sat down by the wayside and cried, sobbing like a child. Little dreadful creatures, who had worn their mother to death, and killed her in her prime! Poor little forlorn orphans, without a mother! She did not know which feeling was the warmest and strongest. But she reached home so shaken between the two emotions, that her present assistant, who filled the place to which Miss Price had hoped to train Lily, and who was a good girl with no nonsense in her head, fully intending to go through with the business, was frightened by the appearance of her principal, who stumbled into the little parlour all garlanded with paper patterns, with tremulous step and blanched cheeks, as if she had seen a ghost. “Something’s to do!” cried the girl. Miss Price made no immediate reply, but sank into a chair to get her breath. “Oh nothing; nothing you know of,” she said at last, “nothing that need trouble you;” and then after a pause, “nothing that will warn you even, not one of you, silly things. You’d all do just the same to-morrow, though it was to cost you your lives.” “I’ll run and get you a cup of tea,” said Sarah, which showed her to be a young woman of sense. Where lives the woman to whom this cordial, promptly and as it were accidentally administered, does not do good? Miss Price gradually recovered herself as she sipped the fragrant tea, and told her story with many sighs and lamentations, yet not without a certain melancholy pleasure. “If girls would only think,” she said; “if they would take a warning; but ne’er a one of you will do that. You think it’s grand to marry a gentleman; but it would be far better to go through with the business like I’ve done, far better! though you’ll never think so.”