Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/112

112 gives me pleasure to find David's affairs turning out so well!"

"Your tune will change when David really goes".

"I hope not, my dear; we will try to lose the sense of our loss in David's gain."

"Charity begins at home, Mr. Ardley."

"But should not stop at home, Anne." Mr. Ardley was a man of sense and benevolence; but, unfortunately, he had begun with his wife as she had with her domestics. He found her not qualified for her place, and "it was too much trouble to teach her." It required too sustained an effort to awaken her to a sense of her deficiencies, and to inspire her with energy to supply them; so he consoled himself with her favourite adage, "What can't be cured must be endured."

One raw disagreeable day, when the mercury was just enough above the freezing point to allow a heavy snow to thaw, Lucy came into the nursery with the two little girls whom she had led from school, that being one of the duties included in her "odds and ends." "My dear Belle," said her mother, "why are you crying?"

"It's so cold, mother, Lucy could hardly help crying. Lucy, please make haste and take off my rubbers." Lucy did her best, but her hands were benumbed, and she was less dexterous than usual. "What ails you, Lucy? your fingers are all thumbs."

"I should think they would be, mother," said little Belle, who had inherited her mother's constitutional kind-heartedness; "she had not any gloves, and she could not keep her hands under her cloak, because she had to take hold of our