d wish to depend as a safeguard to higher principles! And
as to those higher principles, _we_ could have little influence in
forming or strengthening them: we must, at the end of one other year,
commit them to the care of strangers. How little knowledge we could
have of them; how little confidence that they could be firm enough to
resist the attacks of temptations, renewed from day to day, under which
the strong have sunk, and before which the fortified have given way."

"But Charles, my dear Charles, is this all true? Are you sure there is
no mistake? If but one hundredth part were true, I would not hesitate
for a moment."

"Ask those who know, dear Jane: let us ask Mr Barker. Let us tell our
thoughts to Mr Rathbone himself. This is too important a matter to be
decided on our own judgments, without further knowledge; but Mr
Barker's knowledge of the fate of many youths who have been sent out to
India, will, I believe, lead him to encourage us in declining Mr
Rathbone's offer. Whatever we may think of the offer itself, Jane, we
must not forget the generosity which has been shewn in making it."

"Certainly," said Jane, "it will be very difficult to express our sense
of such kindness; and more so still to decline it: but I hope they will
understand and even approve our feeling about it."

The brother and sister then talked over other circumstances connected
with their affairs. Charles asked whether any new plan was in view for
the girls to earn a little more money. Jane smiled, and said that
Isabella had not been idle, but that what she had attempted was yet
unfinished, and that if Charles had not visited them, he would have
known nothing of the matter till the work was completed. The thing was
this: a French lady who had been staying at Mr Everett's in the autumn,
had shewn Jane an elegant little French work on plants. A variety of
flowers were arranged according to various peculiarities, which had
caused them to be adopted as emblems, some of royalty, others of natural
or moral qualities, etcetera. There were plates of many of the flowers,
some well executed, others very indifferently. It struck Jane at once
that Isabella might translate this work, and she borrowed it of the
French lady, that they might examine it at home. They thought, on close
examination, that the work might be improved in the translation: that
various floral emblems might be added, and that drawings, very superior
to the plates of t