own case, and his family might never be a burden on any one.

The income of the school, with their former well-husbanded means, was
affluence for the style to which he aspired; and his grandmother,
though her menus plaisirs had once doubled her present revenue,
regarded it as the same magnificent advance, and was ready to launch
into the extravagance of an additional servant, and of fitting up the
long-disused drawing-room, and the dining-parlour, hitherto called
the school-room, and kicked and hacked by thirty years of boys. She
and Clara would betake themselves to their present little sitting-
room, and make the drawing-room pleasant and beautiful for the bride.

And in what a world of upholstery did not the dear old lady spend the
autumn months! How surpassingly happy was Jane, and how
communicative about Cheveleigh! and how pleased and delighted in
little Charlotte's promotion!

And Charlotte! She ought to have been happy, with her higher wages
and emancipation from the more unpleasant work, with the expectation
of one whom she admired so enthusiastically as Miss Conway, and,
above all, with the long, open-hearted, affectionate letter, which
Miss Ponsonby had put into her hand with so kind a smile. Somehow,
it made her do nothing but cry; she felt unwilling to sit down and
answer it; and, as if it were out of perverseness, when she was in
Mrs. Martha's very house, and when there was so much to be done, she
took the most violent fit of novel-reading that had ever been known;
and when engaged in working or cleaning alone, chanted dismal ballads
of the type of 'Alonzo the brave and the fair Imogens,' till Mrs.
Martha declared that she was just as bad as an old dumbledore, and
not worth half so much.