“Some time,” said he, “but both my apology, and thanks, are due to this lady, for the high treat, she has afforded me.  I was standing outside the veranda, when she entered and seeing it was a stranger, was going off, when she commenced a favorite air of mine, and I was spell bound! but you will introduce me, will you not?

“Oh yes, certainly,” said Miss Falkner in a hesitating tone.  “It is the young person to whom Julia goes to school, and who gives me, and Eliza lessons in music; Miss Willoughby,” here she stopped; she did not even add the gentleman’s name.  “I am sorry Miss Willoughby,” said she “I cannot take my lesson to-day, and therefore need not detain you.”

Helen colored, and bowing left the room, the stranger rose, opened the door for her, and accompanied her to the street door, when he again bowed his head respectfully.

When he returned to the room, Miss Falkner rallied him on his politeness, to the village governess, as she contemptuously, styled Helen.

“Village queen!  I think,” said he, “for she certainly has a most dignified, and ladylike bearing, and is very good looking too.”

“Well, I do declare Mr. Mortimer, you have quite lost your heart.”

“By no means my dear Miss Falkner, it is not quite so vulnerable.  A lovely face and graceful form alone, will never win it:  even with the addition of such a syren’s voice as Miss Willoughby possesses; she sings, not only sweetly, but scientifically.”

“Of course,” said she, “if people are to get their living by their talents, they ought to be well cultivated.”

So little accustomed, since the death of her mother, to kindness from the world in general, and made to feel, so keenly, her dependant situation, Helen fully appreciated the respectful deference accorded to her by the stranger.

Her pupils increased so, that in a short time, she had twelve, besides several for accomplishments but the Misses Falkner, for reasons best known to themselves, declined her future instructions, and just as she was preparing to go to them a day or two after being, so cavalierly dismissed, Mrs. Falkner was announced at the cottage.  She came, she said, to pay the bill, and say her daughters would discontinue their lessons: 

“Of course,” she said, “you will only charge for the time you actually came to them.”

Helen quietly replied, “that she should certainly expect the quarter they had commenced, to be paid for.”  She knew they could afford it, and she felt it due to those she laboured for, not to throw away one penny.

“Well,” said Mrs. Falkner, “this comes of patronizing nobody knows who, it is just what one might expect.”

“Madam,” said Helen, her colour rising as she spoke, “had you thought proper to have done so, you might have known who I was.”

“I think,” said the unfeeling woman, “as Julia’s quarter is up, I shall keep her at home too, for the present.”