Elsie felt the want of this intelligence and this variety of character that Jane described to her so minutely in her frequent letters, and regretted that she could write nothing interesting in return.  When she came home after a long day’s work, she thought she ought to try to keep up a little of her sister’s discipline with the Lowries, and went over their lessons with them.  Tom used to bring to her the most puzzling questions, which she thought she ought to be able to answer, and made great efforts to do so; but instead of the intellectual work refreshing her after the sedentary needlework, she felt all the more exhausted by it.  As for her poetry, she appeared to be unable to write a line, and though she sometimes could read an old book, she seemed quite unfit to pay attention to anything new.

She missed the long walks she had daily taken in Jane’s pleasant company.  It was not far from Peggy’s house to Mrs. Dunn’s place of business, and it was a very monotonous walk.  The white regular houses, all of one size and height, with their thousands of windows exactly on the same model, seemed always staring her out of countenance, and made her feel depressed even in the early morning.  She felt the keen piercing east winds of an Edinburgh spring as she had never done at Cross Hall, where they were sheltered from them by a beautiful plantation of trees; and the continued poor living and the hurried meals began to tell upon a constitution naturally much less robust than Jane’s, so that she began to look pale and thin, and coughed a good deal, and lost her appetite.

With all these drawbacks she improved so much in taste and skill that Mrs. Dunn raised her wages—­or salary, as she genteelly called it—­and put her at the head of the department in which she so much excelled, so that she could not bear to give up her contribution to the little fund that Jane was putting into the Savings Bank.

Miss Rennie had persuaded her mamma to try Mrs. Dunn’s establishment, and had told that lady that it was all on Miss Elsie Melville’s account, so she often saw her and Laura Wilson there, and made bonnets for both of them with her own hands; and the Chalmerses and Jardines had also come to see how Elsie got on, and other people from the neighbourhood of Swinton.  Elsie would rather not have had dealings with so many old acquaintances, but Mrs. Dunn thought it was a just reward for her kindness that she had this increase of custom.

One day, about four months after she had been engaged in this business, Miss Rennie and Miss Wilson came in with most important-looking faces.  While Miss Wilson was busied turning over the fashion-books, her friend whispered to Elsie: