She to teach her!—the child of charity to
presume to insinuate a want in her! The
idea was intolerable.

She went and sat down at a table at some
little distance, and pretended to be busy
playing with her bird, whose golden cage
stood upon it; but, as she did so, she listened
in spite of herself to the following conversation,
passing between Clementina and Matty.

"I am so uncomfortable," the young girl
was saying, rather fretfully; " I don't know
what to do with myself. I try this thing and
try that thing, and nothing gives me any ease
or amusement; and I think it very hard—I
can't help thinking it hard—that I should
have to suffer everything, and Ella, there,
nothing; and then, Nurse makes such a
favourite of her, and nobody in the wide world
cares for me. Oh, I am so miserable,
sometimes!"

"I used to be like you, once, Miss," said
Matty.

At which Ella gave a contemptuous shrug
of the shoulders.

But Matty did not regard it; and she
went on and said, "Look at my face, Miss
Clementina; it's very horrid and ugly, I
know, and I don't wonder as Nurse calls me
rubbish, and hates to see me in her nice
nursery. Many can't help feeling like that.
Do you know how this was done?"

"No. I suppose small-pox; but it's not
like that, for your face is all cut to pieces. I
don't know how it was done."

"It was done by the dreadful agony of fire.
"When I was but a little creetur, living, O Miss!
in such a place—five families of us there were
in one low, dark, nasty room, and, O Miss!
it was like the bad place, indeed it was—such
swearing and blasphemy when the men come
home drunk, and worse, worse, when the
women did so too! Such quarrelling, and
fighting, and cursing, and abusing—and the
poor children, knocked about at such times
anyhow. But my mother never got drunk.
She was a poor feeble creature, and mostly sat
at home all day crooning, as they call it, by
the fire—for they kept a good big fire in
winter in the room. And then, when father
come home he was generally very bad in liquor,
and seeking a quarrel with anything—for
something he must have to quarrel with. Well!
One evening—O! I shall never forget it—a
cold, sleety, winter day it was, and the wind
rushing up our court, and the snow falling thick,
and the blackened drops and great lumps of
snow coming splashing down, and the foul water
oozing in under the door-sill, and all such a
mess; and the poor, tired, or half-drunk
creatures coming in splashed and dripping,
and quarrelling for the nighest places to the
fire, and swearing all the time to make one's
hair stand on end; and father coming in, all
wet and bedabbled, and his hat stuck at the
top of his head, and his cheeks red, and his
eyes staring, though he was chattering with
the cold. Mother was at her place by the
fire, and he comes up in a rage, like, to turn
her out; and she sitting sulky and wouldn't
move; and then there was a quarrel; and he
begun to beat her, and she begun to shriek
out and cry, and the women to scream and
screech. O Miss! in the scuffle—I was
but a little thing—somebody knocks me right
into the fire, and my frock was all in a blaze.
It was but a moment, but it seemed to me
such a time!—all in a blaze of fire! And I
remember nothing more of it, hardly, but a
great noise, and pouring water over me, and
running this way and that. When I come to
myself, where was I?'

Ella turned from her bird, and her attention
seemed riveted upon the story. She forgot
her pride and her insolence in the pleasure
of listening. Clementina seemed hardly to
breathe.

"It was very bad being burned," she said,
at last.

"Horrible, Miss!"

"Go on," cried Ella, impatiently; " what
became of you?"

"When I got out of my daze—for I believe
it was sometime before I came to myself—I
was lying on father's knee, and he had made
a cradle for me, like, of his great strong arms:
and his head was bent down, and he was
a looking at me, and great big hot scalding
tears were dropping fast upon my poor face.

"'My poor—poor little woman,' I heard
him say.

"Then—for my eyes had escaped—I was
aware that there was a beautiful young lady
—at least, I thought her more beautiful than the
angels of heaven—standing on the other side
of me, right opposite my father, and doing
something to my poor arms.

"The lady was very young—seemed scarcely
more than a child herself, though she was a
young married lady. She was beautiful
dressed, all in snow-white muslin, with white
satin sash and bows to her sleeves, and a white
rose in her hair. She had thrown a large
bonnet over it—but now it was tossed off, and
lay with her shawl upon the floor. Bad as
I was—O! in such horrid pain—the sight of
that beautiful dear angel was like a charm
to me; it seemed to chase away the pain. And
then she touched me so delicately, and spoke
so soft and kind!  It was music; Heaven's
own music was her voice."

"Who was she? who could she be?" cried
Ella.

"Why, Miss, who should she be, but Mr.
Stringer, the apothecary's young bride, as he
had just brought home, and all ready dressed
to go out to her first dinner."

Ella turned away contemptuously, with a
gesture that expressed " was that all!"

Clementina said,—

"How nice of her to come to a poor little
burnt child like you! and into such a dreadful
place too! But I wonder she came in her best
gown!"

"As I heard afterwards, it happened that