stay with her until the time for the reopening of the Macassar Female
College.

Subsequently, with his homeless ward upon his arm, the benignant old
lawyer underwent a series of scathing rebuffs from the various
high-strung descendants of better days at whose once luxurious but now
darkened homes he applied for the desired board. Time after time was he
reminded, by unspeakably majestic middle-aged ladies with bass voices,
that when a fine old family loses its former wealth by those
vicissitudes of fortune which bring out the noblest traits of character
and compel the letting-out of a few damp rooms, it is significant of a
weak understanding, or a depraved disrespect of the dignity of
adversity, to expect that such families shall lose money and lower their
hereditary high tone by waiting upon a parcel of young girls. A few
Single Gentlemen desiring all the comforts of a home would not be
considered insulting unless they objected to the butter, and a couple of
married Childless Gentlemen with their wives might be pardoned for
respectfully applying; but the idea of a parcel of young girls! Wherever
he went, the reproach of not being a few Single Gentlemen, or a, couple
of married Childless Gentlemen with their wives, abashed Mr. DIBBLE into
helpless retreat; while FLORA'S increasing guilty consciousness of the
implacable sentiment against her as a parcel of young girls, culminated
at last in tears. Finally, when the miserable lawyer was beginning to
think strongly of the House of the Good Shepherd, or the Orphan Asylum,
as a last resort, it suddenly occurred to him that Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, a
distant widowed aunt of his clerk, Mr. BLADAMS, had been known to live
upon boarders in Bleecker Street; and thither he dragged hastily the
despised object on his arm.

Being a widow without children, and relieved of nearly all the