mangle; it would exercise me of an evening when I'd be done work: don't lave me, Miss, don't darling, any way, till you gather a little strength after all you've gone through; the voice of the stranger is harsh, and the look of the stranger is cold, to those who have lived all their days in the light of a father's love. I took you from your mother's breast a wee-some, woe-some, babby, and sure, my jewel own, I have some right to you. I'll never gainsay you. And to please you, dear, I'll listen to any chapter you'll read out of the Book; nor never let the echo even of a white, let alone a black, oath cross my lips." But Lucy Joyce was too right-minded to live on the labour of an old servant. She retained barely enough to furnish for Mary a comfortable room, and accepted, much to the faithful creature's mortification, a "place" in a family—one of the hardest "places" to endure, and yet as good, perhaps, as, from her father's position, she could have expected—as half-teacher, half-servant; a mingling of opposite duties; against the mingling of which, reason utterly revolts; inasmuch as the one must inevitably destroy the influence of the other.
It was not in the thick atmosphere of the crowded city—where the most healthful find it difficult to breathe, and where the panting sufferer's agony is increased fourfold—that Lucy undertook the duties and labours of her new occupation; her way lay through
