the leading items in the column of receipts to be as follows:—

£.
By annual rent from the Compton Basett farm	 600
By interest on 12,000l. in the Three per Cents	 360
By interest on 1800l. lent on mortgage at 5l. per cent	 90
By interest on 6000l. lent on mortgage at 4l. per cent	 240
By interest on 2500l. lent on mortgage at 5l. per cent	 125
——
£1415
Of this income, (the last item of which, however, had been entered only three weeks before, being the result of the latest appropriation of her savings,) Miss Compton spent not one single farthing, nor had done so since the payment in advance of three hundred and fifty pounds to Mrs. Wilmot for the education and dress of Agnes. In fact, the profits arising from the honey she sold, fully furnished all the cash she wanted; as her stipulated supplies from the farm amounted very nearly to all that her ascetic table required.... She used neither tea nor wine, milk supplying their place.... She had neither rent, taxes, nor servants, to pay; and her toilet, though neat to admiration, cost less than any lady would believe possible, who had not studied the enduring nature of stout and simple habiliments, when worn as Miss Compton wore them.

Such being the facts, it might be imagined that a schedule like the above would have appeared to such a possessor of such an income a sufficient guarantee against any possible pecuniary embarrassment from inviting one young girl to share it with her. But Miss Compton, as she sat in her secluded bower, had for years been looking out upon the fashionable world through the powerful though somewhat distorting lunette d'approche furnished by modern novels; and if she had acquired no other information thereby, she at least had learned to estimate with some tolerable degree of justness the difference between the expense of living in the world, and out of it.

"If I do adopt her, and make her wholly mine," thought she, "it shall not be for the purpose of forming her into a rich country-town miss.... She shall be introduced into the world, ... she shall improve whatever talents Nature may have given her by lessons from the best masters; ... her dress shall be that of a well-born woman of good fortune, and she shall be waited upon as a gentlewoman ought to be. Can I do all this, and keep her a carriage besides, for fourteen hundred a-year?...