ise-book. What extreme pains you take with the
writing! My sister, I suppose, exacts this care. She wants to form you
in all things after the model of a Flemish school-girl. What life are
you destined for, Caroline? What will you do with your French, drawing,
and other accomplishments, when they are acquired?"

"You may well say, when they are acquired; for, as you are aware, till
Hortense began to teach me, I knew precious little. As to the life I am
destined for, I cannot tell. I suppose to keep my uncle's house
till----" She hesitated.

"Till what? Till he dies?"

"No. How harsh to say that! I never think of his dying. He is only
fifty-five. But till--in short, till events offer other occupations for
me."

"A remarkably vague prospect! Are you content with it?"

"I used to be, formerly. Children, you know, have little reflection, or
rather their reflections run on ideal themes. There are moments _now_
when I am not quite satisfied."

"Why?"

"I am making no money--earning nothing."

"You come to the point, Lina. You too, then, wish to make money?"

"I do. I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be
so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, pleasant way of learning a
business, and making my war in life."

"Go on. Let us hear what way."

"I could be apprenticed to your trade--the cloth-trade. I could learn it
of you, as we are distant relations. I would do the counting-house work,
keep the books, and write the letters, while you went to market. I know
you greatly desire to be rich, in order to pay your father's debts;
perhaps I could help you to get rich."

"Help _me_? You should think of yourself."

"I do think of myself; but must one for ever think only of oneself?"

"Of whom else do I think? Of whom else _dare_ I think? The poor ought to
have no large sympathies; it is their duty to be narrow."

"No, Robert----"

"Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, grovelling,
anxious. Now and then a poor man's heart, when certain beams and dews
visit it, may smell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this
spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage, perhaps blossom; but he
must not encourage the pleasant impulse; he must invoke Prudence to
check it, with that frosty breath of hers, which is as nipping as any
north wind."

"No cottage would be happy then."

"When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the natural, habitual
poverty of the worki