such rapid progress in her
studies, and would soon be promoted, but there was no help for it, the
pantry was quite empty of stores, and it could not be replenished
without means. Mrs. Flin was urgent for the rent, too, and threatened to
let the rooms to more prompt tenants. She forgot that she had never been
put off before, and that good Mr. Bond would be sure to make up all
arrearages on his return from his voyage.

It was not that she needed the money at all, for there was plenty of
silver in her coffers, but she loved to look at the shining bits; and it
did not matter to her if they did cheat some hungry one out of the
necessary morsel. Her ambition was to be equal with the Airlys in point
of establishment, therefore she toiled on to lay up the glittering
heap, and every little while she sat down by it to build up imaginary
fabrics of splendor and show. There was a house to let near her friends,
with the same external marks of gentility, and she was negotiating for
it, and it was to be furnished as nearly like her neighbor's as
possible, and she and Sammy were to emerge from the lowly obscurity that
had so long shrouded them, into the magnificence and grandeur of the
next street. It was for this important step that Mrs. Bates was to be
turned out into the chilly air, with the sick boy and the fatherless
girl. The poor woman would not have stooped to entreat for permission to
remain one moment were it not for the danger consequent on removing Pat
in his present situation; but her pleadings availed nothing with Mrs.
Flin any way, and so they went out, with the weak and suffering boy
hobbling between them, and had their things put in a basement-room,
which they called home again. It was not well for Pat down there in the
cold and wet; and they missed the bright sun, and the pure air, and the
cheering prospect, and altogether, what with the physical troubles
incident to their depression of spirits, and the struggle they had for
bread, they were getting on very ill, when a letter reached them from
Mr. Bond.

"I'm coming on finely, my child," he said--it was to
Nannie--"and look quite like Peter Bond again. The sea-voyage
made me hearty, and a good appetite, freely indulged, plumped
me up to my usual size, so that you would scarcely believe me
the same man who left you two months ago, with the skeleton
limbs losing themselves in the folds of my wide garments. Every
thing is so new and s