“And so you, too, have cared for the orphan,” said Mrs. Campbell.  “Well, you will find it a task to rear her as she should be reared, but a consciousness of doing right makes every thing seem easy.  My dear, (speaking to Ella,) run out and play awhile with your sister, I wish to see Mrs. Mason alone.”

“You may go into the garden,” said Mrs. Mason to Mary, who arose to obey; but Ella hung back, saying she ’didn’t want to go,—­the garden was all nasty, and she should dirty her clothes.”

“But, my child,” said Mrs. Campbell, “I wish to have you go, and you love to obey me, do you not?”

Still Ella hesitated, and when Mary took hold of her hand, she jerked it away, saying, “Let me be.”

At last she was persuaded to leave the room, but on reaching the hall she stopped, and to Mary’s amazement applied her ear to the keyhole.

“I guess I know how to cheat her,” said she in a whisper.  “I’ve been sent off before, but I listened and heard her talk about me.”

“Talk about you!” repeated Mary.  “What did she say?”

“Oh, ‘set me up,’ as Sarah says,” returned Ella; and Mary, who had never had the advantage of a waiting maid, and who consequently was not so well posted on “slang terms,” asked what “setting up” meant.

“Why,” returned Ella, “she tells them how handsome and smart I am, and repeats some cunning thing I’ve said or done; and sometimes she tells it right before me, and that’s why I didn’t want to come out.”

This time, however, Mrs. Campbell’s conversation related more particularly to Mary.

“My dear Mrs. Mason,” she began, “you do not know how great a load you have removed from my mind by taking Mary from the poor-house.”

“I can readily understand,” said Mrs. Mason, “why you should feel more than a passing interest in the sister of your adopted daughter, and I assure you I shall endeavor to treat her just as I would wish a child of mine treated, were it thrown upon the wide world.”

“Of course you will,” returned Mrs. Campbell, “and I only wish you had it in your power to do more for her, and in this perhaps I am selfish.  I felt badly about her being in the poor-house, but truth compels me to say, that it was more on Ella’s account than her own.  I shall give Ella every advantage which money can purchase, and I am excusable I think for saying that she is admirably fitted to adorn any station in life; therefore it cannot but be exceedingly mortifying to her to know that one sister died a pauper and the other was one for a length of time.  This, however, can not be helped, and now, as I said before I only wish it were in your power to do more for Mary.  I, of course, know that you are poor, but I do not think less of you for that—­”

Mrs. Mason’s body became slightly more erect, but she made no reply, and Mrs. Campbell continued.

“Still I hope you will make every exertion in your power to educate and polish Mary as much as possible, so that if by chance Ella in after years should come in contact with her, she would not feel,—­ahem,—­would not,—­would not be—­”