Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/19

 and religion, of converting a domestic to a friend. Do these palpable duties enter into the calculations of a majority of employers?

At the end of the week Mrs. Lee had saved two shillings; and having provided for her husband's comfort in her absence, placed her little lame boy within reach of his books and playthings, and given all necessary charges to the little girls, she set off with Lucy at twelve o'clock on her pilgrimage for a place. She entered a decent intelligence-office, paid the fee, and obtained a reference to Mrs. Oatley's, as a consequential man informed her, "one of the most fashionablest houses in Broadway."

"Can you tell me nothing else of the family?" inquired Mrs. Lee.

"Not I, woman—what else can you want to know?"

"If the place does not suit me, you will give me other references?"

"Certainly—we'll suit your slip of a girl to a place—there's no mistake about that."

Mrs. Lee sighed, left the office, and proceeded to the place. The house verified her informer's promise; everything in it and about it had a fashionable aspect. She was shown into Mrs. Oatley's bedroom, where that lady was sitting with a grown-up daughter. Both ladies, on learning their errand, surveyed the humble strangers from head to foot. Mrs. Lee the while, pale and exhausted with her long walk, was left standing as if in royal presence—and this in a land where we vaunt our equality and democratic institutions!

"Do you think she will answer our purpose, Anne?" asked the mother of the daughter.