dining-room window always produce the flowers most needed for the
altar vases, and likewise bouquets for the tables of favoured ladies.
Why, the very daisies never durst lift their heads on his little
lawn, which even bore a French looking-glass globe in the centre.
Miss Nugent, or Miss Mary as every one still called her, as her elder
sister's marriage was recent, was assistant teacher at the School of
Art, and gave private drawing lessons, so as to supplement the
pension on which her mother lived. They also received girls as
boarders attending the High School.

So did Miss Headworth, who had all her life been one of those people
who seem condemned to toil to make up for the errors or disasters of
others. First she helped to educate a brother, and soon he had died
to leave an orphan daughter to be bred up at her cost. The girl had
married from her first situation; but had almost immediately lost her
husband at sea, and on this her aunt had settled at Micklethwayte to
make a home for her and her child, at first taking pupils, but when
the High School was set up, changing these into boarders; while Mrs.
Egremont went as daily governess to the children of a family of
somewhat higher pretensions. Little Ursula, or Nuttie, as she was
called, according to the local contraction, was like the child of all
the party, and after climbing up through the High School to the last
form, hoped, after passing the Cambridge examination, to become a
teacher there in another year.





CHAPTER II.