to promote the comfort and security of his excellent tenants.

Christmas came; and Morris found she could not leave her young ladies while the days were so very short. She would receive no wages after Christmas, and she would take care that she cost them next to nothing; but she could not be easy to go till brighter days—days externally brighter, at least—were at hand, nor till the baby was a little less tender, and had shown beyond dispute that he was likely to be a stout little fellow. She could not think of Miss Margaret getting up quite in the dark, to light the fire; it was a dismal time to begin such a new sort of work. Margaret privately explained to her that these little circumstances brought no discouragement to persons who undertake such labour with sufficient motive; and Morris admitted this. She saw the difference between the case of a poor girl first going to service, who trembles half the night at the idea of her mistress’s displeasure if she should not happen to wake in time; such poor girl undertaking service for a maintenance, and by no means from love in either party towards the other—Morris saw the difference between the morning waking to such a service and Margaret’s being called from her bed by love of those whom she was going to serve through the day, and by an exhilarating sense of honour and duty. Morris saw that, while to the solitary dependant every accessory of cheerfulness is necessary to make her willingly leave her rest—the early sunshine through her window, and the morning songs of birds—it mattered little to Margaret under what circumstances she went about her business—whether in darkness or in light, in keen frost or genial warmth. She had the strength of will, in whose glow all the disgust, all the meanness, all the hardship of the most sordid occupations is consumed, leaving unimpaired the dignity and delight of toil. Morris saw and fully admitted all this; and yet she stayed on till the end of January.

By that time her friends were not satisfied to have her remain any longer. It was necessary that she should earn money; and she had an opportunity now of earning what she needed at Birmingham. The time was come when Morris must go.

The family had their sorrow all to themselves that dismal evening; for not a soul in Deerbrook, except Maria, knew that Morris was going at all. Maria had known all along; and it had been settled that Maria should occupy Morris’s room, after it was vacated, as often as she felt nervous and lonely in her lodging. But she was not aware of the precise day when the separation of