esides capital bread of her own baking, and various
sweet-meats, the best to the taste of her own cooking, the prettiest to
the eye brought from Elbury. Oranges too, and apples, shewed their
yellow or rosy cheeks at her window in their season; and there was
sometimes a side of bacon, displaying under the brown coat the delicate
pink stripes bordering the white fat. Of late years one pane of her
window had been fitted up with a wooden box, with a slit in it on the
outside, and a whole region round it taken up with printed sheets of
paper about 'Mails to Gothenburg,--Weekly Post to Vancouver's Island'--and
all sorts of places to which the Friarswood people never thought of
writing.

Altogether, she throve very well; and she was a good woman, whom every
one respected for the pains she took to bring up her children well. The
eldest, Charles, had died of consumption soon after his father, and there
had been much fear for his sister Matilda; but Lady Jane had contrived to
have her taken as maid to a lady who usually spent the winter abroad, and
the warm climate had strengthened her health. She was not often at
Friarswood; but when she came she looked and spoke like a lady--all the
more so as she gave herself no airs, but was quite simple and humble, for
she was a very good right-minded young woman, and exceedingly fond of her
home and her good mother.

Ellen would have liked to copy Matilda in everything; and as a first
step, she went for a year to a dress-maker; but just as this was over,
Alfred's illness had begun; and as he wanted constant care and
attendance, it was thought better that she should take in work at home.
Indeed Alfred was such a darling of hers, that she could not have endured
to go away and leave him so ill.

Alfred had been a most lively, joyous boy, with higher spirits than he
quite knew what to do with, all fun and good-humour, and yet very
troublesome and provoking. He and his brother Harold were the monkeys of
the school, and really seemed sometimes as if they _could not_ sit still,
nor hinder themselves from making faces, and playing tricks; but that was
the worst of them--they never told untruths, never did anything mean or
unfair, and could always be made sorry when they had been in fault. Their
old school-mistress liked them in spite of all the plague they gave her;
and they liked her too, though she had tried upon them every punishment
she could devise.

Little Miss Jane, the orphan whom