"I might have guessed, certainly. There is little difficulty, to
be sure, in discovering, when work has been neglected or spoilt,
into whose hands it has fallen."

Such were the speeches which fell to Ruth's share on this day of
all days, when she was least fitted to bear them with equanimity.

In the afternoon it was necessary for Mrs Mason to go a few miles
into the country. She left injunctions, and orders, and
directions, and prohibitions without end; but at last she was
gone, and, in the relief of her absence, Ruth laid her arms on
the table, and, burying her head, began to cry aloud, with weak,
unchecked sobs.

"Don't cry, Miss Hilton,"--"Ruthie, never mind the old
dragon,"--"How will you bear on for five years, if you don't
spirit yourself up not to care a straw for what she says?"--were
some of the modes of comfort and sympathy administered by the
young workwomen.

Jenny, with a wiser insight into the grievance and its remedy,
said--

"Suppose Ruth goes out instead of you, Fanny Barton, to do the
errands. The fresh air will do her good; and you know you dislike
the cold east winds, while Ruth says she enjoys frost and snow,
and all kinds of shivery weather."

Fanny Barton was a great sleepy-looking girl, huddling over the
fire. No one so willing as she to relinquish the walk on this