Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/28

 "I would not advise you to come, if you have another place in view," added Ellen, kindly, after delivering Mrs. Louis's message; "Mrs. Louis has an engagement out, and you don't look able to take a long walk for nothing".

Mrs. Louis was not naturally more selfish than others. The sensibility that was poured out over a novel, or exhausted upon herself, if directed into proper channels, would have made her estimate rightly the value of time, the expense of labour, and the pain of hope deferred to a poor woman; would, in short, have given her that lively sense of the rights and wants of others that is manifest in justice and kindness.

The next lady to whom her references admitted her was a Mrs. Ardley, a good-humoured, self-indulgent,easy-tempered woman. She asked few questions, and was satisfied with the answers given. "All I want," she said, "is a, civil, obliging child, that is handy and willing—who will be ready to do a turn for the waiter, run out for the seamstress, help the cook, run up and down for the nurse—odds and ends, you know. If my people are satisfied, I shall be."

Mrs. Lee hesitated. These multiplied employers seemed to her like a many-headed monster; but the hope of anything better was fast fading away. While she hesitated, the cook sent up to know if Mrs. Ardley would lend her a certain dress-cap for a pattern.

"I have done with the cap," said Mrs. Ardley,