Then I suggested that the children should he kept tidier, for which I was insulted by their father.  I wanted them to be dressed up like swells, and if he did that he would soon be a pauper like my father.  This I found was the sentiment of the whole family regarding me.  I was only the daughter of old hard-up Melvyn, consequently I had little weight with the children, which made things very hard for me as a teacher.

One day at lunch I asked my mistress if she would like the children to be instructed in table-manners.  “Certainly,” her husband replied, so I commenced.

“Jimmy, you must never put your knife in your mouth.”

“Pa does at any rate,” replied Jimmy.

“Yes,” said pa; “and I’m a richer man today than them as didn’t do it.”

“Liza, do not put a whole slice of bread to your mouth like that, and cram so.  Cut it into small pieces.”

“Ma doesn’t,” returned Liza.

“Ye’ll have yer work cut out with ’em,” laughed Mrs M’Swat, who did not know how to correct her family herself, and was too ignorant to uphold my authority.

That was my only attempt at teaching manners there.  In the face of such odds it was a bootless task, and as there were not enough knives and forks to go round, I could not inculcate the correct method of handling those implements.

Mrs M’Swat had but one boiler in which to do all her cooking, and one small tub for the washing, and there was seldom anything to cat but bread and beef; and this was not because they were poor, but because they did not know, or want to know, any better.

Their idea of religion, pleasure, manners, breeding, respectability, love, and everything of that ilk, was the possession of money, and their one idea of accumulating wealth was by hard sordid dragging and grinding.

A man who rises from indigence to opulence by business capabilities must have brains worthy of admiration, but the man who makes a fortune as M’Swat of Barney’s Gap was making his must he dirt mean, grasping, narrow-minded, and soulless—­to me the most uncongenial of my fellows.

I wrote once more to my mother, to receive the same reply.  One hope remained.  I would write to aunt Helen.  She understood me somewhat, and would know how I felt.

Acting on this inspiration, I requested her to plead for me.  Her answer came as a slap in the face, as I had always imagined her above the common cant of ordinary religionists.  She stated that life was full of trials.  I must try and bear this little cross patiently, and at the end of a year they might have me back at Caddagat.  A year!  A year at Barney’s Gap!  The possibility of such a thing made me frantic.  I picked up my pen and bitterly reproached my aunt in a letter to which she did not deign to reply; and from that day to this she has rigidly ignored me—­never so much as sending me the most commonplace message, or casually using my name in her letters to my mother.