f which neither Ellen nor her mother
till then had had any intimation. Unused to such language, the
frightened Ellen took up her work and slowly walked homeward.

"O, dear, how my head does ache!" thought she to herself; "and poor
mother! she said this morning she was afraid another of her sick turns
was coming on, and we have all this work to pull out and do over."

"See here, mother," said she, with a disconsolate air, as she entered
the room; "Mrs. Rudd says, take out all the bosoms, and rip off all the
collars, and fix them quite another way. She says they are not like the
pattern she sent; but she must have forgotten, for here it is. Look,
mother; it is exactly as we made them."

"Well, my child, carry back the pattern, and show her that it is so."

"Indeed, mother, she spoke so cross to me, and looked at me so, that I
do not feel as if I could go back."

"I will go for you, then," said the kind Maria Stephens, who had been
sitting with Mrs. Ames while Ellen was out. "I will take the pattern and
shirts, and tell her the exact truth about it. I am not afraid of her."
Maria Stephens was a tailoress, who rented a room on the same floor with
Mrs. Ames, a cheerful, resolute, go-forward little body, and ready
always to give a helping hand to a neighbor in trouble. So she took the
pattern and shirts, and set out on her mission.

But poor Mrs. Ames, though she professed to take a right view of the
matter, and was very earnest in showing Ellen why she ought not to
distress herself about it, still felt a shivering sense of the hardness
and unkindness of the world coming over her. The bitter tears would
spring to her eyes, in spite of every effort to suppress them, as she
sat mournfully gazing on the little faded miniature before mentioned.
"When _he_ was alive, I never knew what poverty or trouble was," was the
thought that often passed through her mind. And how many a poor forlorn
one has thought the same!

Poor Mrs. Ames was confined to her bed for most of that week. The doctor
gave absolute directions that she should do nothing, and keep entirely
quiet--a direction very sensible indeed in the chamber of ease and
competence, but hard to be observed in poverty and want.

What pains the kind and dutiful Ellen took that week to make her mother
feel easy! How often she replied to her anxious questions, "that she was
quite well," or "that her head did not ache _much_!" and by various
other evasive expedients the child t