The poor are always kind to each other, and
the villagers came in with sympathy and
help. The good old minister was down among
the first, and Bessy was taken up to the
manse, for the dreariness of the ruined
farm was too much for the solitary child;
and before a month was past, a prospect
was opened of a more permanent place than
could be found for her at the parsonage-
house.

There was a great handsome mansion at
Balham Hill, near London, with garden-
houses, and coach-house, and stables, and
enormous iron gates, and rows of great trees,
vainly trying to persuade itself by means of
these rural appearances, that it stood in a
great park in the county of Warwick; and
this large domicile, with all its grounds, and
shrubberies, and graperies, and gardens, was
the residence of an overwhelmingly rich
citizen, who daily performed the journey
from these agricultural splendours into a
little dingy-looking lane in the City, and
busied himself all day long about what seemed
to the eyes of the uninitiated, the
paltriest concerns. He toiled from morn to
night among bales of merchandise and
invoices of cargos, and sold shiploads of sugar,
or bought warehousefuls of cotton; for
nothing came amiss to him; and everything
flourished on which he laid his hand. After
many hours of these labours, he stept into
his immensely-decorated carriage at the door
of the dirty counting-house, and was driven
rapidly through streets and avenues till he
reached the suburban elysium at Balham,
and was received at the entrance hall by his
daughter and his wife. This lasted so long,
that it was unanimously believed by the
three personages just named, that it would
last for ever; it was therefore with a feeling
compounded nearly as much of surprise as of
grief that the lady and her child perceived
that the ordinary course of affairs had
suddenly changed: that the carriage came no
more to the door at nine o'clock, and returned
from London at half-past five: that the
dinner was no longer on the table punctually
at six; for a certain tremendous cavalcade
had departed one morning from the front
door, with the principal vehicle profusely
ornamented with black feathers, and a noble
piece of sculpture, emblematic of Hope and
Resignation, rose gradually over the humbler
graves in the Highgate cemetery. How
touching is the grief of a widow left sole
mistress of a place like Balham Belvidere, with
a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the
four per cents! It overflows in square
hatchments over the middle window, and
black velvet over the seat in church, and
yards of crape in all directions, and widows'-
weeds of preternatural size. So the glories
of the Belvidere were eclipsed for many
months under a cloud of mourning. The
bereaved proprietor devoted herself to the
cultivation of her husband's memory and the
spoiling of her daughter's disposition. In
every room of the house, the image of a red-
faced, broad-shouldered, flat-featured man
was suspended, who might have been taken
for the fancy figure of a blacksmith retired
from trade, but was glorified in the eyes of
the widow as the likeness of one of the
handsomest and most aristocratic-looking of men.
The daughter, aged eleven, was treated with
the respect befitting the representative of
such a sire, and the heiress of so much
wealth. She was far from beautiful; indeed
if it had not been for her expectations, she
would have been thought positively ugly—
for her hair was of the reddest; her eyes,
though blue in colour, were not unanimous
in their choice of the objects they fixed on;
and her figure was bad, and her temper not
of the best. But her mother thought by dint
of constantly talking of her beauty, that she
could induce it at last to come— so she spoke
of her golden locks and her interesting eyes,
and thought her Delia (such was the young
lady's name) the perfection of the human
race.

"I've been thinking," said the minister of
Daisyside, to his wife, "of a nice situation
for poor Bessy Miller. There's that rich
English lady up at the Wallace Arms, that
drinks so much mineral water and is so
generous to the poor, she wants a Scotch
maid, and doesn't care how young. Now Bessy's
just a wee past twelve, but she has sense and
discretion enough for twenty-five, and I'll
awa' up this very day, and see what can be
done."

"Will she be kind to the wee bairn?"
inquired the wife, "for we could manage to
find work for her here, and she's no expensive,
and reads so well, and is so mindful, she
wad be a perfect treasure, and we hae nane
o' our ain, ye ken."

"She'll be very kind," replied the gentleman.
"Any body would be kind to Bessy
Miller; and besides, I'm told she has just
lost a lass o' her own, about the same age,—
a most wonderful creature by all accounts,
both for cleverness and beauty, for she
speaks o' little else to all the company at the
Wells,— and she'll, may be, tak' a kindness to
Bessy for the dead bairnie's sake."

The minister started on his benevolent
mission and succeeded as he deserved. The
lady agreed to instal his parishioner as
dressing-maid and reader, and on the following
morning the introduction took place.
When Bessy timidly entered the room where
her future mistress sat, she had many sad
thoughts of the time when she first presented
herself to the grand old lady in the drawing-
room at Daisy Hope. She clung to the good
minister's hand as if loth to lose the last
link of connection between herself and home,
and cast shy looks at the occupant of the
apartment; a large stout figure, rendered