Something between a hindrance and a help.
WORDSWORTH.


Etheldred awoke long before time for getting up, and lay pondering
over her visions. Margaret had sympathised, and therefore they did
not seem entirely aerial. To earn money by writing was her favourite
plan, and she called her various romances in turn before her memory,
to judge which might be brought down to sober pen and ink. She
considered till it became not too unreasonably early to get up. It
was dark, but there was a little light close to the window: she had
no writing-paper, but she would interline her old exercise-book.
Down she ran, and crouching in the school-room window-seat, she wrote
on in a trance of eager composition, till Norman called her, as he
went to school, to help him to find a book.

This done, she went up to visit Margaret, to tell her the story, and
consult her. But this was not so easy. She found Margaret with
little Daisy lying by her, and Tom sitting by the fire over his
Latin.

"Oh, Ethel, good-morning, dear! you are come just in time."

"To take baby?" said Ethel, as the child was fretting a little.

"Yes, thank you, she has been very good, but she was tired of lying
here, and I can't move her about," said Margaret.