"Get her off, if you have to advance a quarter. I'd rather do
anything than send her back for even a week, to have all manner of
nonsense put into her head. I'd sooner go and teach there myself."

"Or send me?" asked his mother.

"Anything short of that," he said.

Miss Heath, as Mrs. Brownlow had guessed, thought an engaged girl as
bad as a barrel of gunpowder, and was quite as much afraid of Miss
Allen putting nonsense into her pupils' heads as the doctor could be
of the reverse process: so, young teachers not being scarce, Carey's
brief connection with Miss Heath was brought to an end in a morning
call, whence she returned endowed with thirteen book-markers, five
mats, and a sachet.

Carey had of her own, as it appeared, twenty-five pounds a year,
which had hitherto clothed her, and of which she only knew that it
was paid to her quarterly by a lawyer at Bath, whose address she
gave. Mr. Brownlow followed up the clue, but could not learn much
about her belongings. The twenty-five pounds was the interest of the
small sum, which had remained to poor Captain Allen, when he wound up
his affairs, after paying the debts in which his early and imprudent
marriage had involved him. He did not seem to have had any
relations, and of his wife nothing was known but that she was a Miss
Otway, and that he had met her in some colonial quarters. The old
lady, with whom the little girl had been left, was her mother's
maternal aunt, and had lived on an annuity so small that on her death
there had not been funds sufficient to pay expenses without a sale of
all her effects, so that nothing had been saved for the child, except