events their affection and respect.  The girls themselves were not outwardly charming; Jessie, the youngest but one, had perhaps a certain claim to prettiness, but, like all her sisters, she was of coarse type.  Their education had been of the most haphazard kind; their breeding was not a little defective; but a certain tact, common to the family, enabled them to make the very most of themselves, so that they more than passed muster among the middle-class young ladies of the town.  As long as they sojourned on the borders of St. Luke’s, nothing was farther from the thoughts of any one of them than the idea that they might have to exert themselves to earn their own living; it was only of late that certain emphatic representations on the part of their father had led Mrs. Cartwright to consider which of the girls was good for anything.  Amy, the eldest, had rather a weak constitution; it was plain that neither in body nor in mind could she be called upon to exert herself.  Eleanor who came next, had musical faculties; after terrific family debates it was decided that she must give lessons on the piano, and a first pupil was speedily found.  Barbara was good for nothing whatever, save to spend money on her personal adornment; considering that she was the plainest of the family—­her sisters having repeatedly decided the point—­her existence appeared on the whole singularly superfluous.  Then came Jessie.  Of Jessie her father had repeatedly said that she was the only girl of his who had brains; those brains, if existent, must now be turned to account.  But Jessie had long since torn up her school-books into curl-papers, and, as learning accumulated outside her head, it vanished from the interior.  When she declared that arithmetic was all but a mystery to her, and that she had forgotten what French she ever knew, there was an unprecedented outbreak of parental wrath:  this was the result of all that had been spent on her education!  She must get it back as best she could, for, as sure as fate, she should be packed off as a governess.  Look at Emily Hood:  why, that girl was keeping herself, and, most likely, paying her mother’s butcher’s bill into the bargain, and her advantages had been fewer than Jessie’s.  After storms beyond description, Jessie did what her mother called ‘buckle to,’ but progress was slight.  ’You must get Emily Hood to help you when she comes home for her holidays,’ was Mrs. Cartwright’s hopeful suggestion one night that the girl had fairly broken down and given way to sobs and tears.  Emily was written to, and promised aid.  The remaining daughter, Geraldine, was held to be too young as yet for responsible undertakings; she was only seventeen, and, besides, there was something rather hopeful going on between her and young Baldwin, the solicitor, who had just begun practice in Dunfield.  So that, on the whole, Geraldine’s lot looked the most promising of all.