“Beautiful!” exclaimed the shop-keeper who purchased all Clemence’s articles.  “I’m afraid, Miss, you won’t find ready sale for it here, though.  There ain’t many that can appreciate a thing like that in this village.  I would not venture to run the risk myself, but if it was anything in the way of finery now, it would be different.  If you will embroider some of those gay scarfs and slippers, and some more of the children’s fixins, I’ll buy them, for they take mightily.”

“Then you don’t think I can dispose of this at any rate?” asked Clemence, despondingly.  “I need the money very much.”

“I know you do,” said the man compassionately, gazing into the girl’s pale face.  “You ought not to be working at anything after such a dangerous illness.  Perhaps you had better leave it here for a few days, and I will see if I cannot get any orders for you.”

“Very well,” said Clemence, “I should be greatly obliged if you would,” and she turned away more hopefully.

Upon her next inquiry, she found that a Mrs. Burton had desired her to call, with specimens of her work, at her house, which, by the way, was the mansion of the place.  Clemence had heard much of this lady, but was not personally acquainted with her.

“It’s all right,” said the brisk, little storekeeper.  “I think she is the very one for you to go to, for she has plenty of money at her command.  She took quite a fancy to the basket of flowers, and inquired all about you, asking if you would not call and see her directly.”

Clemence gladly followed the advice thus given her, and after a walk of about half a mile, found herself at Mrs. Burton’s residence.  The lady herself came to the door.  Clemence introduced herself.

“Oh, yes, you are the one Mr. Weston was speaking about, and I told him I thought I might be able to help you in some manner.”

Clemence thanked her, wondering inwardly, at the same moment, if it was as disgraceful to be poor as many people seemed to think it.  This was not the first time this thought had arisen in her mind.  She had suffered before having any experience in the matter, that, in a country like this, where nearly all of the wealthy and influential members of society have arisen from obscurity, that honest labor was really no disgrace, and that if a person offered a fair equivalent for money, either by the labor of the hands or brain, that it was a very laudable thing to do.

But, upon having to make the trial, she had been not a little astonished at the result.  She found that if she offered her articles even below their real value, that it was considered an act of magnanimity for the purchaser to hand out the miserable pittance that was her due.  She had many times been told, insolently, “I do this to help you, because Mr. or Miss, ‘This, That or the Other’ told me you were poor and obliged to support yourself by this means,” and this, when the one who uttered it knew that they had got twice the worth of their money, and were congratulating themselves over thus taking advantage of another’s necessities; nor was her own, as she well knew, by observation, an exceptional case.  Everywhere vulgarity and ignorance can flaunt itself before the admiring eyes of the multitude, while gold hides with its glitter every defect.