decision, but she was not sincere with herself. She knew she liked the
girl, and Hender's conversation amused her: to send her away meant to
surrender herself completely to her mother-in-law's stern kindness and her
husband's irritability.

Hender was the window through which Kate viewed the bustle and animation of
life, and even now, annoyed as she was that she would not be able to get
the dress done in time, she could not refrain from listening to the girl's
chatter. There was about Miss Hender that strange charm which material
natures possess even when they offend. Being of the flesh, we must
sympathize with it, and the amiability of Hender's spirits made a great
deal pass that would have otherwise appeared wicked. She could tell without
appearing too rude, how Mr. Wentworth, the lessee, was gone on a certain
lady in the new company, and would give her anything if she would chuck up
her engagement and come and live with him. When Hender told these stories,
Kate, fearing that Mrs. Ede might have overheard, looked anxiously at the
door, and under the influence of the emotion, it interested her to warn her
assistant of the perils of frequenting bad company. But as Kate lectured
she could not help wondering how it was that her life passed by so wearily.
Was she never going to do anything else but work? she often asked herself,
and then reproached herself for the regret that had risen unwittingly up in
her mind that life was not all pleasure. It certainly was not, 'but perhaps
it is better,' she said to herself, 'that we have to get our living, for me
at least'--her thoughts broke off sharply, and she passed out of the
present into a long past time.

Kate had never known her father; her mother, an earnest believer in Wesley,
was a hard-working woman who made a pound a week by painting on china. This
was sufficient for their wants, and Mrs. Howell's only fears were that she
might lose her health and die before her time, leaving her daughter in