walking in from the other
room. The girls were in the kitchen. "I quite agree with you, Maria. It
is as unpleasant for me as it is for you, and you are doing no good to
Matilda. It will be much better for us to separate. I have been
thinking so for some time. You may choose what you will do, and I will
make arrangements. Either you may join Anne and Letitia in town, and
learn the business they are learning; or if you like any other business
better, I will try and arrange it for you. Let me know to-morrow
morning what you decide upon, and I will finish up the matter at once.
I am quite tired of the present state of things, as you say."

Mrs. Candy finished her harangue and swept out by the other door.
Nobody had interrupted her, and when she was gone nobody spoke. The two
girls looked at each other, Maria with a face of consternation, Matilda
white with despair. You might have heard a pin fall in the kitchen,
while Mrs. Candy's footsteps sounded in the hall and going up stair
after stair. Then Matilda's head went down on the table. She had no
words.

"The old horrid old thing!" was Maria's exclamation. "She came and
listened in the other room!"

But Matilda did not answer, and there was no relief in the explanation.

"I won't go!" said Maria next. "I won't go, unless I'm a mind to. It's
my mother's house, not hers."

Matilda had no heart to answer such vain words. She knew they were vain.

"Why don't you speak!" said Maria, impatiently. "Why do you sit like
that?"

"It's no use, Maria," said the little one, without raising her head.

"What is no use? I said I wouldn't go; and I will not, unless I choose.
She can't make me."

"She will!" said Matilda, in a burst of despairing tears.

And she did. Before the week was over, Maria was relieved at her post
in the kitchen and established with a dressmaker, to learn her trade.
But not in Shadywalk. Mrs. Candy thought, she said, that Maria would
have a better chance in a larger town, where there was more work and a
larger connection; so she arranged that she should go to Poughkeepsie.
And thither Maria went, to live and learn, as her aunt remarked.

The change in Matilda's life was almost as great. She had no more now
to do in the work of the house; Mrs. Candy had provided herself with a
servant; and instead of cooking, and washing dishes, and dusting, and
sweeping, Matilda had studies. But she was kept as close as ever. She
had now to write, and cipher, and study F