"We can get our marketing sent home."

"But the waiting oh the table. Who will do that?"

"Half a dollar a week extra to the chambermaid will secure that service from her."

"But she has enough to do besides waiting on the table," objected Mrs.

Darlington.

"Miriam and I will help more through the house than we have yet done.

Three dollars a week and the waiter's board will be saving a good deal."

Mrs. Darlington sighed heavily, and then said--

"To think what I have borne from that Scragg and his family, ignorant, low-bred, vulgar people, with whom we have no social affinity whatever, who occupy a level far below us, and who yet put on airs and treat us as if we were only their servants! I could bear his insolence no longer. Ah, to what mortifications are we not subjected in our present position! How little dreamed I of all this, when I decided to open a boarding-house! But, Edith, to come back to what we were conversing about, it would be something to save the expense of our waiter; but what are three or four dollars a week, when we are going behind hand at the rate of twenty?"

"If Mrs. Marion"--

Edith checked herself, and did not say what was in her mind. Mrs.

Darlington was silent, sighed again heavily, and then said--

"Yes; if it wasn't for the expense of keeping Mrs. Marion. And she has no claim upon us."

"None but the claim of humanity," said Edith.

"If we were able to pay that claim," remarked Mrs. Darlington.

"True."

"But we are not. Such being the case, are we justified in any longer offering her a home?"

"Where will she go? What will she do?" said Edith.

"Where will we go? What will we do, unless there is a change in our favour?" asked Mrs. Darlington.

"Alas, I cannot tell! When we are weak, small things are felt as a burden. The expense of keeping Mrs. Marion and her two children is not very great. Still, it is an expense that we are unable to meet. But how can we tell her to go?"

"I cannot take my children's bread and distribute it to others,"

replied Mrs. Darlington, with much feeling. "My first duty is to them."

"Poor woman! My heart aches for her," said Edith. "She looks so pale and heart-broken, feels so keenly her state of dependence, and tries so in every possible way to make the pressure of her presence in our family as light as possible, that the very thought of turning her from our door seems to involve cruelty."

"All that, Edith, I feel most sensibly. Ah me! into what a strait are we driven!"

"How many times have I wished that we had never commenced this business!" said Edith. "It has brought us nothing but trouble from the beginning; and, unless my fears are idle, some worse troubles are yet before us."

"Of what kind?"

"Henry did not come home until after two o'clock this morning."

"What!" exclaimed the mother in painful surprise.

"I sat up for him. Knowing that he had gone out with Mr. Barling, and, finding that he had not returned by eleven o'clock, I could not go to bed. I said nothing to Miriam, but sat up alone. It was nearly half past two when he came home in company with Barling. Both, I am sorry to say, were so much intoxicated, that they could scarcely make their way up stairs."

"Oh, Edith!" exclaimed the stricken mother, hiding her face in her hands, and weeping aloud.

Miriam entered the room at this moment, and, seeing her mother in tears, and Edith looking the very image of distress, begged to know the cause of their trouble. Little was said to her then; but Edith, when she was alone with her soon after, fully explained the desperate condition of their affairs. Hitherto they had, out of regard for Miriam, concealed from her the nature of the difficulties that were closing around them.

"I dreamed not of this," said Miriam, in a voice of anguish. "My poor mother! What pain she must suffer! No wonder that her countenance is so often sad. But, Edith, cannot we do something?"

Ever thus, to the mind of the sweet girl, when the troubles of others were mentioned to her, came, first, the desire to afford relief.

"We can do nothing," replied Edith, "at present, unless it be to a.s.sist through the house, so that the chambermaid can attend the door, wait on the table, and do other things now required of the waiter."

"And let him go?"

"Yes."

"I am willing to do all in my power, Edith," said Miriam. "But, if mother has lost so much already, will she not lose still more if she continue to go on as she is now going?"

"She hopes to fill all her rooms; then she thinks that she will be able to make something."

"This has been her hope from the first," replied Miriam.

"Yes; and thus far it has been a vain hope."

"Three hundred dollars lost already," sighed Miriam, "our beautiful furniture ruined, and all domestic happiness destroyed! Ah me! Where is all going to end? Uncle Hiram was right when he objected to mother's taking boarders, and said that it was the worst thing she could attempt to do. I wish we had taken his advice. Willingly would I give music lessons or work with my hands for an income, to save mother from the suffering and labour she has now to bear."

"The worst is," said Edith, following out her own thoughts rather than replying to her sister, "now that all our money is gone, debt will follow. How is the next quarter's rent to be paid?"

"A hundred aid fifty dollars?"

"Yes. How can we pay that?"

"Oh dear!" sighed Miriam. "What are we to do? How dark all looks!"

"If there is not some change," said Edith, "by the close of another six months, every thing we have will be sold for debt."

"Dreadful!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miriam, "dreadful!"

For a long time the sisters conferred together, but no gleam of light arose in their minds. All the future remained shrouded in darkness.

CHAPTER VII.

THE man named Burton, to whom reference has been made as being particularly attentive to Miriam, was really charmed with the beautiful young girl. But the affection of a man such as he was comes to its object as a blight instead of a blessing. Miriam, while she did not repel his attentions, for his manner towards her was ever polite and respectful, felt, nevertheless, an instinctive repugnance towards him, and when she could keep out of his way without seeming to avoid him, she generally did so.

A few evenings after the conversation held with Edith, as given in the last chapter, Burton, in pa.s.sing from the dining room, said to Miriam,--