item at once. I am content."

"First, however, you shall see the good girl herself, Mr. Dartmouth,
and then we can have a postscript--or should I say a codicil?--on her
account. John, please say to Lucy, I wish her to come to me. After all
the stocks and bonds in the world, Mr. Dartmouth, our lives are what our
servants please to make them."

"True, indeed, my love; but the comfort is, if we are well stocked with
bonds of the right sort, servants that don't suit can be changed for
those that do."

"And the more changes, the worse, commonly;--an exception is so rare,
I dread nothing like change. The chance of improving a bad one is even
better, I think."

"I don't believe there is anything good in the flunkey line that money
won't buy. I have always found I could have anything I wanted, if I saw
fit to pay its price. Money, no matter what simpletons preach, money, my
dear, is"----

"Why, Lucy, what is the matter?" exclaimed Miss Millicent, with some
surprise and anxiety, as she saw the girl, who had just entered, instead
of advancing, awkwardly shrink on one side into a chair behind the door,
with a shudder, as if she had trod on a reptile. The next moment she was
at her side, earnestly whispering something in her ear, evidently an
explanation of the circumstances of the case, to which Lucy had hitherto
been an entire stranger.

"Pray, excuse me, Ma'am," was the girl's scarce audible response to some