admired in Mrs. Hastings--her head enveloped in a black silk apron
and her hands incased in buckskin gloves, was Eugenia, setting her
room to rights, and complaining with every breath of her hard lot,
in being thus obliged to exert herself on hot summer mornings.

"Don't you wish yon were rich as Mrs. Hastings?" asked Alice, who
chanced to come in.

"That I do," returned Eugenia. "I have been uncomfortable and
discontented ever since I called upon her, for I can't see why
there should be such a difference. She has all the money, servants
and dresses which she wants, besides the handsomest and most
elegant man for a husband; while I, Eugenia Deane, who am ten
times smarter than she, and could appreciate these things so much
better, am obliged to make all sorts of shifts, just to keep up
appearances. But didn't I impress her with a sense of my
_greatness!_" she added, after a pause, and Alice rejoined,
"Particularly when you talked of your _waiting-maid!_ I don't
see, Eugenia, how you dare do such things, for of course Mrs.
Hastings will eventually know that you mean Dora."

"I'm not so sure of that," returned Eugenia; "and even if she
does, I fancy I have tact enough to smooth it over with her, for
she is not very deep."

For a moment Alice regarded her sister intently, and then said, I
wonder from whom you take your character for deception."

"I've dwelt upon that subject many a time myself," answered
Eugenia, and I have at last come to the conclusion that as father