the dress you have on
amazingly. I suppose that was made in Swinton. And you must see
Mademoiselle; she is with us still, and as positive as ever; and many
of the young people you will recognise. How we have all talked about
you and Miss Alice lately. It was such an extraordinary settlement!"

Jane forced herself into the show-room, listened mechanically to the
exclamations and remarks of Mademoiselle, the forewoman, shook hands
with all the work-girls she had known, looked with vacant eyes on the
new sleeve, and heard its merits descanted on very fully; then went
back into Mrs. Dunn's parlour, and had a glass of ginger wine and a
piece of seed-cake with her; after which she took leave, and Mrs. Dunn
felt satisfied, for she had paid Miss Melville a great deal of
attention in spite of her altered circumstances.

"Where am I to go to now?" said Jane to herself as she again trod the
pavement of Princes Street and walked along it, then turned up into the
quieter parts of the town where professions are carried on. She passed
by shops, and warehouses, banks and insurance companies' offices,
commission agencies, land agencies, lawyer's offices.

"Every one seems busy, every place filled, and there appears to be no
room for me," she said to herself. "I must try Mr. MacFarlane, however;
he knows something of me, and will surely feel friendly. I hope he will
not be so much astonished at my views as other people have been."

Mr MacFarlane, however, was quite as much surprised as Mr. Rennie, or
the publisher, when Jane asked him for employment as a copying or
engrossing clerk, either indoors or out of doors. He was quite as much
disposed to exaggerate the difficulties she herself would feel from not
understanding the forms of law, or not being able to write the
particular style of caligraphy required for legal instruments. He had
heard of the singular education Henry Hogarth, an old crony and
contemporary of his own, had given to his nieces, and as his own
old-bachelor crotchets lay in quite another direction, he had never
thought of that education doing anything but adding to their
difficulties, and preventing them from getting married. When the girls
had been left in poverty he only thought of their trying for the nice
quiet situations that every one recommended, but which seemed so hard
to obtain, and then sinking into obscure old maidenhood in the bosom of
a respectable family. When Jane mentioned the matronship, Mr.
MacFa