, by executing all Miss
Pinckney's millinery orders, and acting also as general servant as well
as shopwoman of the establishment, still she was never allowed to
forget that she was under an obligation to her sister, and that she
ought to be "thankful for all her mercies!"

"It is not as if it was only yourself, Patience. Think what it is to
have a boy like yours! Enough to drive one mad, with his monkey tricks
and his impudence. I don't say that I regret taking you in. Blood is
thicker than water, and you are my poor father's child, though he had
cause to rue the day he married your silly mother--he never had a day's
peace after that."

Such sentiments, expressed with freedom and without intermission, were
a trial in themselves; but lately things had assumed a far more serious
aspect.

Jack had been a mere baby when first he and his mother had been taken
in by Miss Pinckney. But eleven years had changed the baby of two
years old into a strong, self-willed boy of thirteen, impatient of
control, setting all his aunt's rules at defiance, and coming in from
school every day, more antagonistic, and more determined, as he said,
to "pay the old auntie back in her own coin."

In vain Mrs. Harrison had remonstrated; in vain she had striven to keep
the peace. For ever before her eyes was the dread that Jack would
carry his oft-repeated threat into execution, and go to sea. Then,
indeed, the light of her stricken life would finally go from her, and
she would have nothing left to live for!

Jack was a boy likely, in spite of all his faults, to fill a mother's
heart with pride. He was the picture of merry, happy boyhood, with a
high spirit, which was like a horse without a bridle, and carried him
away beyond all bounds of tongue and temper. But to his mother he
could be gentle and penitent, acknowledging his faults, and showing
real sorrow at having grieved her by warfare with his aunt. There was
an excellent boys' school in Yarmouth, where he made good progress with
his lessons, and was a favourite with his school-fellows; and the
master, though often irritated by his tricks and carelessness, found it
hard to be angry with him, or to inflict the punishment he deserved.

It is possible that Jack would have been able to get on more peaceably
at home, had there not been another person frequently at his aunt's
home with whom he waged a perpetual warfare. This person was a tall,
meagre-looking young man, a clerk in an