now she is in great trouble?"

"Oh yes, uncle. All the money she had when she began is spent; and what
she now receives from boarders but little more than half pays expenses."

"I knew it would be so. But my word was not regarded. Your mother is no
more fitted to keep a boarding-house than a child ten years old. It
takes a woman who has been raised in a different school, who has
different habits, and a different character."

"But what can we do, uncle?" said Miriam.

"What are you willing to do?"

"I am willing to do any thing that is right for me to do."

"All employment, Miriam, are honourable so far as they are useful,"
said Mr. Ellis, seriously, "though false pride tries to make us think
differently. And, strangely enough, this false pride drives too many,
in the choice of employments, to the hardest, least honourable, and
least profitable. Hundreds of women resort to keeping boarders as a
means of supporting their families when they might do it more easily,
with less exposure and greater certainty, in teaching, if qualified,
fine needle-work, or even in the keeping of a store for the sale of
fancy and useful articles. But pursuits of the latter kind they reject
as too far below them, and, in vainly attempting to keep up a certain
appearance, exhaust what little means they have. A breaking up of the
family, and a separation of its members, follow the error in too many
cases."

Miriam listened to this in silence. Her uncle paused.

"What can I do to aid my mother?" the young girl asked.

"Could you not give music lessons?"

"I am too young, I fear, for that. Too little skilled in the principles
of music," replied Miriam.

"If competent, would you object to teach?"

"Oh, no. Most gladly would I enter upon the task, did it promise even a
small return. How happy would it make me if I could lighten, by my own
labour, the burdens that press so heavily upon our mother!"

"And Edith. How does she feel on this subject?"

"As I do. Willing for any thing; ready for any change from our present
condition."

"Take courage, then, my dear child, take courage," said the uncle, in a
cheerful voice. "There is light ahead."

"Oh, how distressed my mother will be when she finds I am gone!" sighed
Miriam, after a brief silence, in which her thoughts reverted to the
fact of her absence from home. "When can we get back again?"

"Not before ten o'clock to-night. We must go on as far as Bristol, and
then return by the ev