It was now tacitly understood between the sisters that Sally was to be kitchen-servant to the other.  And as a servant she was treated.  When company were at the house, she was not to know them or sit down in the parlour with them.  Her little ones were required to keep themselves out of the family sitting-room, and Mrs. Williams’s children taught, not by words, but by actions, to look upon them as inferiors.  From confinement, and being constantly checked in the outburst of their feelings, they soon began to look much worse than they did when first taken from their comfortless abode.  The youngest, a quiet child, might usually be found sitting on a little stool by her mother in the kitchen, playing with some trifling toy; but the other was a wild little witch, who was determined to obey no arbitrary laws of her aunt’s enacting.  There was no part of the house that she did not consider neutral ground.  Now she would be playing with her little cousins in the breakfast-room, or in some of the chambers, and now clambering over the shop-board among the boys and journeymen.  All liked her but Mrs. Williams, and to her she was a thorn in the flesh, because she set at defiance all her restrictions.  This was a cause of much trouble to Mrs. Haller, who saw that the final result would be a separation from one or both of her children.  The only reason that weighed with her and caused her to remain in her unpleasant and degraded situation, was the ardent desire she felt to keep her two youngest children with her.  She could not trust them to the tender mercies of strangers.  Deep distress and abject poverty had not blunted a single maternal feeling, and her heart yearned for her babes with an increased anxiety and tenderness as the chances every day appeared less in favour of her retaining them with her.  One had nearly grown up, and was a sorrow and an anguish to her heart.  Two others, quite young, were bound out, and but one of them had found a kind guardian.  And now, one of the two that remained she feared would have to be removed from her.

One day, her sister called her into the sitting-room, where she found a lady of no very prepossessing appearance.

“Sally,” said she, “this is Mrs. Tompkins.  She has seen Emily, and would like to have her very much.  You, of course, have no objections to getting so good a place for Emily.  How soon can you get her ready to go?  Mrs. Tompkins would like to have her by the first of next week.”

Thus, without a moment’s warning, the dreaded blow fell upon her.  She murmured a faint assent, named an early day, and retired.  She could not resist the will of her sister, for she was a dependant.