nts could
afford to do."

"So you have no room for me," said Jane. "I should have known it. I
have no claim on any one, not a relation in the world but a sister,
less fit to cope with it than myself, and a cousin, newly found under
sad circumstances, and tied down not to assist us. But could you not
give us any encouragement, for that is what I want most? Your own
experience----"

"My own experience is very different from what yours can be. My father
died in the early years of a long lease of twenty-one years, when he
had laid out several thousands, all the capital he had, and all he
could raise, upon the land, hoping to get it out again with interest
and a large profit, for the farm was a fine one, though it had been
badly managed before. He had no son to take up the lease; and had
things been wound up, and the lease sold, there would have been a heavy
loss. I believed that I could manage the concern, and got leave from
the landlord, rather as a favour, to continue on Allendale. I was
industrious and methodical, and reduced the expenses of management
below what they had been in my father's time, and consequently made
more money than even he could have made of it. My landlord willingly
took me again for a tenant when the lease was expired, particularly as
I offered as much as any one for it. The value of the lease, stock, and
crop, that I began business with, could not have been less for me to
keep than 5,000 pounds, though if they had been sold they might have
brought only half that amount. You see I had a good start. I like the
work, and it likes me. I am a richer, a happier, and a more useful
woman, than I could have been if I had had 20,000 pounds all left me in
a lump."

"This is very different, indeed, from our case," said Jane. "It is the
want of capital that I feel so very hard. I could make something of
capital."

"I suppose that for you, Miss Melville, with nothing but youth, health,
and a stout heart, there is nothing but a governess's situation to be
thought of. Society seems to say to gentlewomen who have not enough to
live on, 'Teach or marry;' and the governess market and the marriage
market are both sadly overstocked. People have not all got a taste for
either alternative. Here am I, a sensible, well-disposed woman, but yet
I never could teach in my life, and I never had any wish to marry."

"The world is large," said Jane; "there are thousands of fields of
labour. Uncle did not wish us to be gove