and
who kept a horse and cart, was always called Mr. Lee.

He had married a pretty, delicate young girl, who had soon fallen into
such hopeless ill-health, that his sister Charlotte was obliged to live
at home to attend to her and to the shop. And when young Mrs. Lee died,
leaving three small children, another sister, Rose, gave up her place to
help in the care of her old father and the little ones.

Rose Lee had been a sewing maid, and, being clever, had become a very
fair dressmaker; so she took in needlework from the first, and when good
old master Lee died, and the children had grown old enough to be more
off her hands, she became the dressmaker and sempstress of the place,
since there was no doubt that all she took in hand would be thoroughly
well turned out of hand, from a child's under garment up to Mrs. and
Miss Manners's dresses. "For," as her sister Charlotte proudly said of
her, "the ladies had everything made down here, except one or two
dresses from London for the fashion." Her nephews were both from home,
one as a pupil-teacher, the other at a baker's with a superior business,
and her niece, Amy, the only girl of the family, had begun as a
pupil-teacher, but she had such bad headaches at the end of her first
year that her father was afraid to let her go on studying for
examinations, and cancelled her engagement, and thus she became an
assistant to her aunt. Then Jessie Hollis, from the shop, came home from
her aunt's, unwilling to go to service, and begged Miss Lee to take her
and teach her dressmaking; and, having thus begun, she consented, rather
less willingly, to take likewise Florence Cray from the Manners Arms,
chiefly because she had known her mother all her life, and believed her
to be careful of the girl; besides which, it was a very respectable
house.

As plain work, as well as dressmaking, was done, there was quite enough
employment for all the hands, as well as for the sewing machine, at
which Amy, a fair, delicate-looking girl, was whirring away, while
Jessie was making the button-holes of a long _princesse_ dress, and
Florence tacking in some lining; or rather each was pausing a little in
her work to answer Grace Hollis, Jessie's sister, a businesslike-looking
young person, dressed in her town-going hat and jacket, who had stepped
in, on her way to meet the Minsterham omnibus, to ask whether Miss Lee
wanted to have anything done for her, and likewise how many yards of
narrow black velvet