may be ignorant.
So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make
her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father's abuse; the rank to
which she firmly believed her lost aunt Esther had arrived. Now, while a servant
must often drudge and be dirty, must be known as his servant by all who visited
at her master's house, a dressmaker's apprentice must (or so Mary thought) be
always dressed with a certain regard to appearances; must never soil her hands,
and need never redden or dirty her face with hard labour. Before my telling you
so truly what folly Mary felt or thought, injures her without redemption in your
opinion, think what are the silly fancies of sixteen years of age in every
class, and under all circumstances. The end of all the thoughts of father and
daughter was, as I said before, Mary was to be a dressmaker; and her ambition
prompted her unwilling father to apply at all the first establishments, to know
on what terms of painstaking and zeal his daughter might be admitted into ever
so humble a workwoman's situation. But high premiums were asked at all; poor
man! he might have known that without giving up a day's work to ascertain the
fact. He would have been indignant, indeed, had he known that, if Mary had
accompanied him, the case might have been rather different, as her beauty would
have made her desirable as a show-woman. Then he tried second-rate places; at
all the payment of a sum of money was necessary, and money he had none.
Disheartened and angry, he went home at night, declaring it was time lost; that
dressmaking was at all events a troublesome business, and not worth learning.
Mary saw that the grapes were sour, and the next day she set out herself, as her
father could not afford to lose another day's work; and before night (as
yesterday's experience had considerably lowered her ideas) she had engaged
herself as apprentice (so called, though there were no deeds or indentures to
the bond) to a certain Miss Simmonds, milliner and dressmaker, in a respectable
little street leading off Ardwick Green, where her business was duly announced
in gold letters on a black ground, enclosed in a bird's-eye maple frame, and
stuck in the front parlour window; where the workwomen were called her young
ladies; and where Mary was to work for two years without any remuneration, on
consideration of being taught the business; and where