prospects to unite one humble life with another, one form of toil to
another, and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm affection,
pale-hued like the flowers in the window, to uphold this home.

Vague hope certainly gave life to the mother's dim, gray eyes. Every
morning, after the most frugal breakfast, she took up her pillow,
though chiefly for the look of the thing, for she would lay her
spectacles on a little mahogany worktable as old as herself, and look
out of the window from about half-past eight till ten at the regular
passers in the street; she caught their glances, remarked on their
gait, their dress, their countenance, and almost seemed to be offering
her daughter, her gossiping eyes so evidently tried to attract some
magnetic sympathy by manoeuvres worthy of the stage. It was evident
that this little review was as good as a play to her, and perhaps her
single amusement.

The daughter rarely looked up. Modesty, or a painful consciousness of
poverty, seemed to keep her eyes riveted to the work-frame; and only
some exclamation of surprise from her mother moved her to show her
small features. Then a clerk in a new coat, or who unexpectedly
appeared with a woman on his arm, might catch sight of the girl's
slightly upturned nose, her rosy mouth, and gray eyes, always bright
and lively in spite of her fatiguing toil. Her late hours had left a
trace on her face by a pale circle marked under each eye on the fresh
rosiness of her cheeks. The poor child looked as if she were made for
love and cheerfulness--for love, which had drawn two perfect arches
above her eyelids, and had given her such a mass of chestnut hair,
that she might have hidden under it as under a tent, impenetrable to
the lover's eye--for cheerfulness, which gave quivering animation to
her nostrils, which carved two dimples in her rosy cheeks, and made