Bessie had told her whole story, and as she told it her face was a study, with its look of eagerness and fear and the bright color which came and went so rapidly, but as she finished speaking left it white as ashes.  Miss Betsey’s face was a study, too, as she regarded the girl fixedly until she stopped talking; then, motioning her to a chair, she said: 

“Sit down, child, before you faint away; you are pale as a cloth.  Take off your bonnet and have some tea.  I suppose you are hungry.”

She rang the bell for Susan to bring hot tea and toast, which she made Bessie eat, pressing it upon her until she could take no more.

“Now, then,” she said, when the tray had been removed, “one can always talk better on a full stomach.  So tell me what you want, and what you expect me to do.  But sit over there, where I can see you better; and don’t get excited.  I shall not eat you; at least, not to-night.”

She wanted Bessie in a good light, where she could see her face, from which she never took her eyes, as the girl repeated in substance what she had said at first, making some additions to her story, and speaking of the ship in which she had come, but not of Miss Lucy or Grey.

“Where did you get the money?  It costs something to cross the ocean,” Miss Betsey asked, a little sharply, and Bessie replied: 

“It did not cost me much, for I came out as a steerage passenger.  I had just enough for that and my ticket here.”

“You came in the steerage?” and in her surprise Miss Betsey arose from her chair and walked once or twice across the floor, while Bessie looked at her wistfully, wondering if she, too, were ashamed like Neil.

But shame had no part in Miss Betsey’s feelings, which were stirred by a far different emotion.  Resuming her seat after a moment, she said: 

“And you have come here to work—­to earn money?  What can you do?”

“I thought I might teach French, perhaps; and German, I am a pretty good scholar in both,” Bessie replied, and her aunt rejoined: 

“French and German!  Fiddlesticks!  There are more fools teaching those languages now than there are idiots to learn them.  Why, my washerwoman’s daughter is teaching French at twenty-five cents a lesson, though she can no more speak it than a jackdaw.  French, indeed!  You must try something else, or you will never earn that two hundred and fifty-five pounds.”

This was not very encouraging, and Bessie felt the color dyeing her face, and her heart sinking, as she said: 

“I might sew.  I am handy with my needle, I have made all my own dresses, and Dorothy’s, too.”

“Yes, you might sew, and twist your spine all out of shape, and get the liver complaint,” Miss Betsey interposed; and then, poor Bessie, fearing that everything was slipping from her, said, with a choking sob: