“Where is the skirt of Lady Farnham’s dress?  The flounces not put on!  I am surprised!  May I ask to whom this work was entrusted yesterday?” inquired Mrs. Mason, fixing her eyes on Ruth.

“I was to have done it, but I made a mistake, and had to undo it.  I am very sorry.”

“I might have guessed, certainly.  There is little difficulty, to be sure, in discovering, when work has been neglected or spoilt, into whose hands it has fallen.”

Such were the speeches which fell to Ruth’s share on this day of all days, when she was least fitted to bear them with equanimity.

In the afternoon it was necessary for Mrs Mason to go a few miles into the country.  She left injunctions, and orders, and directions, and prohibitions without end; but at last she was gone, and, in the relief of her absence, Ruth laid her arms on the table, and, burying her head, began to cry aloud, with weak, unchecked sobs.

“Don’t cry, Miss Hilton,”—­“Ruthie, never mind the old dragon,”—­“How will you bear on for five years, if you don’t spirit yourself up not to care a straw for what she says?”—­were some of the modes of comfort and sympathy administered by the young workwomen.

Jenny, with a wiser insight into the grievance and its remedy, said—­

“Suppose Ruth goes out instead of you, Fanny Barton, to do the errands.  The fresh air will do her good; and you know you dislike the cold east winds, while Ruth says she enjoys frost and snow, and all kinds of shivery weather.”

Fanny Barton was a great sleepy-looking girl, huddling over the fire.  No one so willing as she to relinquish the walk on this bleak afternoon, when the east wind blew keenly down the street, drying up the very snow itself.  There was no temptation to come abroad, for those who were not absolutely obliged to leave their warm rooms; indeed, the dusk hour showed that it was the usual tea-time for the humble inhabitants of that part of the town through which Ruth had to pass on her shopping expedition.  As she came to the high ground just above the river, where the street sloped rapidly down to the bridge, she saw the flat country beyond all covered with snow, making the black dome of the cloud-laden sky appear yet blacker; as if the winter’s night had never fairly gone away, but had hovered on the edge of the world all through the short bleak day.  Down by the bridge (where there was a little shelving bank, used as a landing-place for any pleasure-boats that could float on that shallow stream) some children were playing, and defying the cold; one of them had got a large washing-tub, and with the use of a broken oar kept steering and pushing himself hither and thither in the little creek, much to the admiration of his companions, who stood gravely looking on, immovable in their attentive observation of the hero, although their faces were blue with cold, and their hands crammed deep into their pockets with some faint hope of finding warmth there.  Perhaps they feared that, if they unpacked themselves from their lumpy attitudes and began to move about, the cruel wind would find its way into every cranny of their tattered dress.  They were all huddled up, and still; with eyes intent on the embryo sailor.  At last, one little man, envious of the reputation that his playfellow was acquiring by his daring, called out—­