she lives happy ever after! But some of us know better! We don't know
how far the marrying ones always do live very happy ever after--'

'For shame, Jenny!' muttered Lady Merrifield.

'But,' went on Miss Mohun, 'even you that have been lucky enough to get
under your own young ladies know that life here is all new beginnings
at the bottom, just as when you were very proud of yourselves for
getting out of the infant school, you found it was only being at the
bottom of the upper one; and I can tell the twelve-year-olds--I see
some of them--that it is often a finer thing to be at the head of the
school than the last in the house. Ay, you've got to work up there
again, and it is a long business and a steady business, but it is to be
done. I knew a girl, thirty-five years ago, that my sister-in-law took
from school, and she was not a genius either, and I am quite sure she
could not do rule-of-three, nor tell what is the capital of Dahomey, as
I dare say every one here can do, but I'll tell you what she did, and
that was, her best, and there she has been ever since; and the last
time I saw her was sitting up in her housekeeper's room, in her silk
gown, with her master's grandchildren hanging about her, respected and
loved by us all. And I knew another, a much clever girl at school,
with prettier ways to begin with, but--I'm sorry to say, her finger
were too clever, and it was not very happy ever after, though she did
right herself.' And then Aunt Jane went on to the difficulties of
having to deal with such quantities of pots and pans, and knives and
forks, and cloths and brushes, each with a use of its very own, just as
if she had been a scullery-maid herself; telling how sense and memory
must be brought to bear on these things just as much as in analyzing a
sentence, and how even those would not do without the higher motive of
faithfulness to Him whose servants we all are. Her finish was a