g, and
returned to do the cooking and mending. Ethel Maud Mary stole the time
to run up occasionally to show sympathy; but her own poor little hands
were overfull, what with her mother ill in bed, both ends to be made
to meet, and lodgers uncertain in money matters. She lost all her
plumpness that winter, her rose-leaf complexion faded to the colour of
dingy wax, and her yellow hair, so brightly burnished when she had
time to brush it, became towzled and dull; but her heart beat as
bravely-kind as ever, and she never gave in.

She climbed up one day in a hurry to Mr. Brock's room, which Beth
occupied, snatching a moment to make inquiries and receive comfort;
and as soon as she entered she subsided suddenly on to a chair out of
breath.

"How you do it a dozen times a day, Miss Maclure, I can't think," she
gasped.

"Those stairs have taught me what servants suffer," Beth said, as if
that, at all events, were a thing for which to be thankful.

"You'd not have driven 'em, even if you hadn't known what they
suffer," said Ethel Maud Mary. "That's the worst of this world. All
the hard lessons have got to be learnt by the people who never needed
them to make them good, while the bad folk get off for nothing."

"I don't know about not needing them," said Beth. "But I do know this:
that every sorrowful experience I have ever had has been an advantage
to me sooner or later."

"I wish I could believe that Ma's temper would be an advantage to me,"
Ethel Maud Mary said, sighing; "she's that wearing! But there, poor
dear! she's sick, and there's no keeping the worries from her. There's
only you and Mr. Brock in the house just now that pays up to the day,
so you may guess what it is! He's getting on nicely now, I suppose;
but you shouldn't be sitting here in the cold. A shawl don't make the
difference; it's the air you breathe; and you ought to have your
oil-stove going. Isn't the fire enough for him? I can't think so many
degrees it need be in his room always, when there's no degree at all
in yours."

"Oh, I'm hardy," said Beth. "I never was better."

"You look it," Ethel Maud Mary said sarcastically, "like a pauper just
out of prison. What are you worrying about?"

"Beef-tea," said Beth. And so she was, and bread and butter, fuel,
light, and lodging--everything, in fact, that meant money; for the
money was all but done, and she had had a shock on the subject lately
that had shaken her considerably.

She had spread out a