Hospital among the pensioners.  I am desired to say that Lady T. gives no wages the first year; and you will be expected to send your daughter neatly fitted out, that she may be able to remain in the room when there is company.  If this offer will not suit, I can do nothing more; the difficulty of patronage increases every day.  You will send an answer.

     “VIRGINIA HAWKINGTREFYLYAN.

“I was just closing my letter when Lady Scrimmage came in; she tells me that Lady Towser is suited, and that you have no hopes of this situation.  I have done my best.  Lady Scrimmage has, however, informed me that she thinks she can, upon my recommendation, do something for you in Greenwich, as she deals largely with a highly respectable and fashionable milliner of the same name as your own, and with whom it would be of the greatest advantage to your daughter to be placed as an apprentice, or something of that sort.  This is an opportunity not to be lost, and I therefore have requested Lady S. to write immediately, and I trust by my patronage, she will gain a most enviable situation.”

“That postscript is admirable,” observed I, “and ought to have put my mother in a good humor.  Is she not called by Lady Hercules ’highly respectable and fashionable’?”

“Very true,” replied Virginia; “but my mother cannot get over the first part of the letter, in which she is mentioned as ’a decent and well-behaved menial.’  She has since received a note from Lady Scrimmage, requesting her to take me in some capacity or another, adding, by way of postscript, ’You know you need not keep her if you do not like—­it is very easy to send her away for idleness or impertinence; but I wish to oblige Lady Hercules, and so, pray, at all events, write and say that you will try her.”

“And what has my mother said in reply?”

“She did not show me the answer; but, from what I have collected from her conversation, she has written a most haughty, and, I presume it will be said, a most impertinent letter to both the ladies; the one to Lady Scrimmage accompanied with her bill, which has not been paid these three years.  I am sorry that my mother has been annoyed.  My father, to whom I related what had taken place, told me that my mother was very ill treated by Lady Hercules, and that she had smothered her resentment with the hopes of benefiting her children by her patronage; but that was at a time when she little expected to be so prosperous as she is now.”

“It is all true, my dear girl; I recollect my father telling me the whole story.  However, I presume my mother, now that she can venture upon defiance, has not failed to resort to it.”

“That I am convinced of.  I only hope that she will carry her indignation against great people so far as not to court them as she has done, and abandon all her ridiculous ideas of making a match for me.  After all, she has my welfare sincerely at heart, and, although mistaken in the means of securing it, I cannot but feel that she is actuated solely by her love for me.”