Nor could it have been otherwise in any house where the entire anxiety was, first, to make money, and next, not to spend it.

The heads did not in the least know that they were unkind to her.

On the contrary, Bruce thought himself a pattern of generosity if he gave her a scrap of string; and Mrs Bruce, when she said to inquiring gossips "The bairn's like ither bairns--she's weel eneuch," thought herself a pattern of justice or even of forbearance.

But both were jealous of her, in relation to their own children; and when Mrs Forbes sent for her one Saturday, soon after her first visit, they hardly concealed their annoyance at the preference shown her by one who was under such great obligation to the parents of other children every way superior to her whose very presence somehow or other made them uncomfortable..