would compare this obscure and vegetative life to that of the ivy that
clung to these chill walls, to that of the peasants born to labor, who
are born, toil, and die unknown to the world they have helped to feed.
A house-owner, after studying the house with the eye of a valuer, would
have said, "What will become of those two women if embroidery should go
out of fashion?" Among the men who, having some appointment at the
Hotel de Ville or the Palais de Justice, were obliged to go through
this street at fixed hours, either on their way to business or on their
return home, there may have been some charitable soul. Some widower or
Adonis of forty, brought so often into the secrets of these sad lives,
may perhaps have reckoned on the poverty of this mother and daughter,
and have hoped to become the master at no great cost of the innocent
work-woman, whose nimble and dimpled fingers, youthful figure, and
white skin--a charm due, no doubt, to living in this sunless street--had
excited his admiration. Perhaps, again, some honest clerk, with twelve
hundred francs a year, seeing every day the diligence the girl gave to
her needle, and appreciating the purity of her life, was only waiting
for improved prospects to unite one humble life with another, one form
of toil to another, and to bring at any rate a man's arm and a calm
affection, pale-hued like the flowers in the window, to uphold this
home.

Vague hope certainly gave life to the mother's dim, gray eyes. Every
morning, after the most frugal breakfast, she took up her pillow, though
chiefly for the look of the thing, for she would lay her spectacles on a
little mahogany worktable as old as herself, and look out of the window
from about half-past eight till ten at the regular passers in the
street; she caught their glances, remarked on their gait, their dress,
their countenance, and almost seemed to be offering her daughter, her
gossiping eyes so evidently tried to attract some magnetic sympathy by
manoeuvres worthy of the stage. It was evident that this little review
was as good as a play to her, and perhaps her single amusement.

The daughter rarely looked up. Modesty, or a painful consciousness of
poverty, seemed to keep her eyes riveted to the work-frame; and only
some exclamation of surprise from her mother moved her to show her small
features. Then a clerk in a new coat, or who unexpectedly appeared with
a woman on his arm, might catch sight of the girl's slightly uptur