morning--'be content, my dear, with your pink gingham; _who knows but
by and by you may have a silk dress for Sundays_?'"

"Ah, my dear Mrs. Myles, you are sowing bad seed," said the clergyman.

"What, sir, when I told her to be content with the little pink
gingham?"

"No; but when you told her she might have a silk one hereafter. Don't
you see, instead of uprooting you were fostering pride?--instead of
directing her ambition to a noble object, and thereby elevating her
mind, you were lowering it by drawing it down to an inferior one?"

"I did not see it," observed Mrs. Myles, simply; "but you know, sir,
there's no more harm in a silk than a cotton."

"I must go now, my good lady," said the minister; "only observing
that there _is_ no more harm in one than in the other, except when the
desire to possess anything beyond our means leads to discontent, if
not to more actively dangerous faults. I must come and lecture the
little maids myself."

"And welcome, sir, and thank you kindly besides; poor little dears,
they have no one to look after them but me. I daresay I am wrong
sometimes, but I do my best--I do my best."

The curate thought she did according to her knowledge, but he lamented
that two such exquisitely beautiful children, possessed of such
natural gifts, should be left to the management of a vain old
woman--most vain--though kindly and good-hearted--giving kindness with
pleasure, and receiving it with gratitude--yet totally unfit to bring
up a _pair of beauties_, who, of all the female sex, require the most
discretion in the management.

"I wonder," thought the Reverend Mr. Stokes--"I wonder when our
legislature will contrive to establish a school for mothers. If girls
are sent to school, the chances are that the contamination over
which the teacher can have no control--the contamination of evil
girls--renders them vicious; if, on the contrary, they are kept at
home, the folly of their mothers makes them fools--a pretty choice!"
Mr. Stokes turned down a lane that ran parallel with the garden
where the children went to school; and hearing Helen's voice in loud
dispute, he paused for a moment to ascertain the cause.

"I tell you," said the little maid, "Rose may be what she likes, but
I'll be queen."

"How unfit," quoth the curate to himself--"how utterly unfit is Mrs.
Myles to manage Helen!" The good man paused again; and to the no small
confusion of the little group, who had been making holiday under