Mrs. Norcross was a large coarse woman, with red hair, light blue eyes, and freckled face, but with a good humored expression of countenance.  Her two daughters, Araminta and Clarinda, were not very refined in their manners, owing to a deficiency in their education, but were good hearted, cheerful girls.  Araminta was much pleased with Henriette’s horse, but did not appreciate the name, and declared he should be called Selim, for she knew she had read of some great man who had a horse by that name, and who ever heard of one named Sullensifadda, ugly name.  She mounted him one day, gaily caparisoned, but he being equally unaccostomed to his new name and rider, soon convinced her he had a light pair of heels.

Henriette sat busily at work by the window, when the clatter of the well known hoofs sounded upon her ear, and she raised her eyes just in time to see her well remembered steed flying toward the mountain pass with the speed of lightning, while the frightened Araminta was clinging to his mane to prevent falling to the ground, her long riding dress and veil were streaming behind her their full length in the wind, which was blowing pretty briskly, and her small riding-cap was drawn a little farther upon one side than the rules of gentility seemed to require.  Henriette pitied the poor girl, but she could not help smiling at her ludicrous appearance.  She turned pale when she saw the horse turn suddenly down a narrow path that led to the river, plunge into its dashing waves, and swimming round a circuitous route, spring back upon the shore, and setting his face towards home, bore back the mortified girl all wet and dripping through the streets at too rapid a rate for any one to interfere with his arrangements, arriving at home apparently well satisfied with his performance.

Months passed away, such months as Henriette had never known before.  She could have borne her toil, her simple fare, and the ten thousand deprivations she was subjected to, had this been all; but the averted looks of her friends were more than all these.  She used to sit a little while in the twilight hour upon her parents’ graves, and recall their loved forms and tender words, and people her imagination with by-gone scenes, and then, as she contrasted the present, her cherished text would come to illuminate her mind and calm her troubled spirit, “all things work together for good to them that fear God,” and she was comforted and strengthened to go on her weary way, for this took in life with all its little incidents, its every day trials, and she returned to the active duties of life, realizing that “this is not our home.”

Ere the spring returned she had accomplished her wish, and entered into many families as dress maker where she used to be admitted as an equal, if not superior.  She maintained her dignity of deportment, for now she well knew poverty did not deteriorate from worth, a lesson perhaps she too might have been slow to learn under some circumstances, but which now had been taught her by stern necessity, and her rigid lessons are never soon forgotten.