Laying aside for the sake of clearness that indefinite term of girl--for girls are girls from the age of three up to forty-three, if not previously married--dropping that generic word, we may say that then, at that wedding of her brother, she was a child; and now, at the death of her father, she was a woman.

Nothing, perhaps, adds so much to womanhood, turns the child so quickly into a woman, as such death-bed scenes as these.

Hitherto but little had fallen to Lucy to do in the way of woman's duties.

Of money transactions she had known nothing, beyond a jocose attempt to make her annual allowance of twenty-five pounds cover all her personal wants--an attempt which was made jocose by the loving bounty of her father.

Her sister, who was three years her elder--for John came in between them--had managed the house; that is, she had made the tea and talked to the house-keeper about the dinners.