“ So Sarah watched May mincing with her knife and fork, and conscientiously tried to do likewise, to the infinite amusement of the younger ones, of whom May took no notice whatever, and to whose jibing remarks she showed a superb indifference.
"Sarah," shouted Tom, stuffing his mouth so full of pressed tongue and bread-and-butter that Sarah's heart stood still for fear of his choking, "how many pieces of bread-and-butter can you put into your mouth at once?"
"Disgusting boy!" remarked May disdainfully, without giving Sarah time to reply. "You grow more atrociously vulgar every day you live!" ”

“ Poor Sarah's eyes filled with tears, and she turned to May in the hope of getting protection from her.
"Take no notice," said May superbly. "You'll get used to Flossie after a bit. She's a regular tell-tale; but she won't tell Ma, for Ma won't listen. She never does. Ma never will listen to tales, not even from Tom."
Flossie began to laugh uproariously, as if it was the greatest joke in the world to tease Sarah, who had yet to learn the peculiar workings of a Stubbs character. Then Miss Clark interrupted with a remark that Flossie's sash was not very well tied. ”

“ Nannie, Nannie, it is good of you! It is good! I shall never forget it. The first penny I earn, dear, shall be yours; and I will never forget what my dear little sister has done for me, never--never, as long as I live."
A few days after this Rosalind was hard at work in the studio of the artist for whose teaching she had longed for so many weary months. And how she did work!
"I have one pupil who works," her maestro got into the habit of saying. "Some of you have a natural gift; you have a correct eye, and you have firm touch. ”

“ And as she was a favourite with Miss Best, so was she a favourite with Signor Capri, the master who taught her the violin. He was quick to recognise the true artist soul that dwelt within her, and gave her all the help that lay in his power; in fact, Sarah was his favourite pupil, his pet, and he put many chances of advancement toward her great ambition in her way. ”

“ Nancy Macdonald gave her attention to stockings and table-linen, and shopping and ordering and dusting; to keeping boarders in good temper, and making herself generally useful; to superintending the education and manners of the little ones, to smoothing down the rough edges of her mother's chronic asperity--in short, to being a real help; but her much loved work practically went to the wall. She dreamed a good deal while she was doing other things, but mere dreaming is not of much help towards making name or fortune; work is the only road which leads to either. ”

“ Of all her pupils, Sarah was Miss Best's favourite. In her she recognised the only worker. May was good-tempered, and possessed the blessing of a placid and dignified disposition; but May's capacity for learning was not great, and Miss Best soon found that it was no use trying to drive her a shade faster along the royal road to knowledge. She went at a willing jog-trot; she could not gallop because she had not the power. With Flossie it was different. Flossie had brilliant capacities which she would not use. Miss Best was determined that she should use them and exert them. ”

“ Miss Clark went away and got married--to May's mingled sorrow and delight, and to Flossie's unfeigned and unutterable disgust--for Mrs. Stubbs chose a lady to fill her place, who was what she called "a strict disciplinarian," and Flossie had considerably less freedom and fun than she had aforetime. For Miss Best had not only a strong mind and a strong will, but also a remarkably strong body, and seemed able to be on the alert at all times and seasons. ”

“ Tom vowed and protested that it was not his fault; Janey had pushed him over against Flossie; Janey appealed to Miss Clark to remember that at the very moment she was handing her cup in the opposite direction; and Miss Clark began to wring her hands and exclaim that she would ask to have Tom sent back to school again, for stand his cruel and unbrotherly behaviour she neither could nor would. And in the midst of it all, young Johnnie seized the opportunity of helping Minnie freely to jam and eating off her plate, as if he were eating for a wager. ”

“ I can't think, Nancy, why you cannot get something useful to occupy yourself with. It seems to me that I have slaved and sacrificed myself all my life, in every possible direction, simply that you may waste your whole time spoiling good paper, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, from morning till night, with your fingers inky, and your thoughts in the clouds, and your attention on nothing that I want you to attend to. I don't call it a good reward to make to me. ”

“ Our Ada Elizabeth's too stupid to live, is she? Well, you're like to know, Gerty; it was you won three first prizes last half, wasn't it? A great credit to you, to say nought about the 'good conduct and regular attendance.' Yes, you're like to know all about it, you are."
"Dear me, Gerty," Mrs. Dicki'son would as often as not chime in fretfully, having just wit enough to keep on the blind side of "Father," "eat your tea, and let our Ada Elizabeth alone, do; it isn't pretty of you to be always calling her for something. ”

“ Flossie was equally determined that she would not; and so for the first few months life in the Stubbs's schoolroom was a hand-to-hand fight between Flossie and Miss Best; and Miss Best came off winner.
Yet, though she got the better of Flossie and made her work, she never gave her the same place in her heart that she gave to Sarah, who worked with all her heart and soul, because she was impressed with the idea that if she only worked hard enough she might be a great woman one day. ”

“ Stubbs began dearly to repent herself of her weakness; for Flossie, with her emancipation, seemed to have left her old self in the schoolroom, and to have taken up a new character altogether. She became very refined, very fashionable, very elegant in all her ideas and desires.
"My mother really is a great trial to me," she said one day to Sarah. "She's very good, and all that, you know; but she's so--well, there's no sort of style about poor mother. And it is trying to have to take men up and introduce them to her. ”

“ Nannie looked past her sister towards the tall old painter standing behind her.
"Your lessons," she faltered, with quivering lips.
"My little heroine," said the old painter tenderly, "your sister is my favourite among all my pupils. I would rather," he went on, laying his hand on Rosalind's shoulder--"I would rather teach one real worker such as she is for love, than fifty of the usual kind who come to me. She is just the real worker one might expect with such a sister."
"You will go on teaching Rosalind," Nannie cried in a bewildered way, "for nothing?" ”

“ And often and often, as the years rolled by, and she was still the darling star of the people who love to live in the realms of fiction, did Marjory ponder over that vivid dream by the riverside, and try to satisfy herself that it really was no more than a dream, and that the old lady with the sweet clear voice had had no being except in her excited brain. ”

“ Mr. Mackenzie was something in the city, and had not apparently hit upon a good thing, for there was not much money to spare in the house at Putney. I rather fancy that he was managing clerk to a tea-warehouse, but am not sure upon that point. Mrs. Mackenzie had been a governess, but of course she had not started life as a teacher of small children; no, she had come into the world in an upper room of a pretty country vicarage, where the olive branches grew like stonecrop, and most visitors were in the habit of reminding the vicar of certain lines in the hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm. ”

“ Flossie observed, "nor why you should want to help Ma. I'm sure she'll have enough to live very comfortably, only, of course, she must be content to live a little less extravagantly than she did before. I do believe," she added, with a superb air, "in people being content and happy with what they have; it's so much more sensible than always pining after what they haven't got. By the bye, Sarah, we are going to have a dinner-party to-morrow night; I couldn't ask Ma because of her mourning, but if you like to come in in the evening, and bring your violin, we shall be very pleased, I'm sure." ”

“ Tom didn't mean to spill your tea; he only wanted you to look at Johnnie cribbing jam when he'd been told not to have any. And it's the first night Ma's at home, and Tom's her favourite; and if you get him into trouble with Pa, she'll give what she's brought for you to somebody else. So you just hold your tongue, Flossie, and be a bit nice to Miss Clark, and get her to say nothing about it. It isn't as if you were hurt--and besides, you can't pretend you're hurt and then go down to dessert. It's your turn to go down to-night. ”

“ Mrs. Stubbs cried in gasps. "Oh, dear, dear! Why, child, you're just like a little 'eathen. A broom is a carriage, a close carriage, something like a four-wheel cab, only better. Oh, dear, dear! and we keep three, do we? Oh, what a joke to tell Stubbs!"
"Miss Sarah knows," struck in the old nurse, with some indignation; "the doctor's carriage is what Mrs. Stubbs calls a broom, dearie."
Sarah turned her crimson face from one to the other. "But Father always called that kind of carriage a bro-am," she emphasized, "and I didn't know you meant the same, Aunt." ”

“ I shall enjoy myself far better at home"; and Flossie caught hold of Minnie's arm, and stalked along the Parade as if she cared so little that she did not want to hear any more about that great lady, her Aunt George.
"What did you think of her?" May asked of Sarah.
"Is she very ill?" Sarah asked, thinking of the bath-chair and her aunt's languid wrists and tones.
"Ill?--no! Ma says she's a hy-po-chon-driac," returned May, pronouncing the long word in syllables. "That's fancying yourself ill when you ain't. See? But all the same, Aunt George is very stylish." ”

“ It is very funny that there should be so wide a difference necessary between the composition of music for the voice and music for the piano. For the first there must be a little something to catch the ear, a little swing in the refrain, a something to make the head wag to and fro; the words may be ever so silly if they are only bordering on the pathetic, and if the catch in the refrain is taking enough the rest of the song may be as silly as the words, and still it will be a success. ”

“ The resplendent footman had relieved Sarah of her violin-case and carried it upstairs for her. Mrs. George motioned to it as he announced her visitors. "With great care, Chawles," and "Chawles" put it down on a chair beside the inlaid grand piano as if it were a baby and might squeal.
"With great care, Chawles." "How are you, dears?" Mrs. George said, giving each a limp and languid hand. "How oppressive the evening is!" Then to "Chawles," "Let tea be served." ”

“ To be jealous of a poor little girl who has no father or mother, who has come among strangers at nine years old, and is fretting her poor little heart out for the sake of the father who loved her better than any one in all the world; to be jealous of her being taken out once when you know it is only on business they have gone--oh! for shame, Flossie! for shame!"
"Oh, well, she needn't fret after her pa so much," Flossie retorted, not taking Miss Clark's remarks to heart at all. ”

“ That's never Miss Mignon.'
"'Ah, well, Humphie,' said your father, 'Miss Mignon has never been lost at dead of night before; it's enough to frighten any child, and though she's as quick as a needle, she's only a baby after all.'
"The carriage was still at the door, and we went down as quickly as the horses could go to Hammersmith, feeling sure that we should find Mignon there, frightened and tired, but safe. And when we got there the child wasn't Mignon at all, but a little, commonly-dressed thing who didn't seem even to know what her name was. ”

“ Flossie's remarks were very pious. "I'm sure, Sarah," she said, setting her rich folds of crape and silk straight, "I am heartily glad to find that you have so much good feeling as to wish to relieve poor Ma of the expense of keeping you. How much happier you will be to feel you are no longer a burden on anybody! There's nothing like independence. ”

“ Mrs. Dicki'son burst out into passionate sobbing. "I lie 'ere and I can't lift my finger for 'er," she gasped out, "and--and--it was just like Ada Elizabeth to go and get the fever when she was most wanted; she always was the contrariest child that I had, always."
Mr. Dicki'son drew his breath sharply, as if some one had struck him in the face, but with an effort he pulled himself together and answered her gently: "Nay, wife--Emily, don't say that. The little lass held up until she couldn't hold up no longer. I'll go and quiet Mirry. She's always quiet enough with me. ”

“ Can you help me?" "You are a brave child!" the violin-master cried; "and God has given you the rarest of all good gifts--a grateful heart. I think I can help you; I think so. Only this morning I had a letter from a friend who is arranging a concert tour; he has first-rate artistes, and he wants a lady violinist."
"Me!" cried Sarah excitedly.
"But," said the maestro, raising his hand, "he does not give much money."
"But it would be a beginning," she broke in.
"He gives six pounds a week."
"I'll go!" Sarah cried. ”

“ Mackenzie felt that to do that would be to put a great wrong upon little Nannie, for which she would justly be able to reproach her all her life long.
"It would not do, my dear," she said to Rosalind, when her elder daughter was one day holding forth on the glories which might one day be hers if only she could get her foot upon this, the lowest rung of the ladder by which she would fain climb to fame and fortune; "and really I don't see the sense or reason of your being so anxious to follow art as a profession. I am sure you paint very well. ”

“ He was not anxious to be popular, and had it not been that the house in which he lived was his own, and that it suited his family as a home, Gardener's Lane would not have counted him among its inhabitants.
Mrs. Dicki'son was a good deal younger than her husband--a pretty, weak, sentimental woman, rather gushing in disposition, and very injudicious. She was always overwhelmed with troubles and babies; although, as a matter of fact, she had but six children altogether, and one of them died while still an infant. Gerty was twelve years old, and Ada Elizabeth just a year younger ”

“ Sarah cried, her face in a flame.
"It's--it's worth five hundred pounds!" Mrs. Stubbs fairly gasped in her surprise. "Sarah," she said, "what are you saying? Little girls ought not to tell stories; it's wicked. Do you know where you'll go to? Sarah, I'm shocked and surprised at you!"
"Auntie, dear," said Sarah, "it's true--all true. It is, indeed! Ask the doctor, ask the vicar--ask any one who knows about violins, and they'll tell you! It's a real Amati; it's worth five hundred pounds--perhaps more. ”

“ It came uppermost in his mind at that moment.
"You'll do your best?" he said, a little wistfully. "You'll not let time go by, and--and----?"
"We shall be in communication with every police-station in the kingdom in a few hours," returned the inspector, who knew pretty well what was passing in the soldier's mind. "But, all the same, you mustn't be over-much disappointed if there proves to be nothing in it. You see, if such a child was being inquired for, we should have heard of it before this. However, we'll do our best; you may be very sure of that." ”