"Aunt Dolly," said Rose, timidly, about a month after the events above related, "Aunt Dolly"—and here Rose stopped short.

"Out with it," said Dolly, "if you've got any thing to say. You make me as nervous as an eel, twisting that apron-string, and Aunt Dolly-ing such an eternity; if you have got any thing to say, out with it."

"May I go to the evening school?" asked Rose, "it is a free school."

"Well—you are not free to go, if it is; you know how to read and write, and I have taught you how to make change pretty well, that is all you need for my purposes."

"But I should like to learn other things, Aunt Dolly."

"What other things, I'd like to know? that's your mother all over. She never was content without a book at the end of her nose. She couldn't have earned her living to have saved her life, if she hadn't got married."

"It was partly to earn my living I wanted to learn, Aunt Dolly; perhaps I could be a teacher."

"Too grand to trim caps and bonnets like your Aunt Dolly, I suppose," added she, sneeringly; "it is quite beneath a charity orphan, I suppose."

"No," said Rose; "but I should like to teach, better."

"Well, you won't do it; never—no time. So there's all there is to that: now take that ribbon and make the bows to old Mrs. Griffin's cap—the idea of wanting to be a school-teacher when you have it at your fingers' ends to twist up a ribbon so easy—it is ridikilis. Did Miss Snow come here last night, after I went out, for her bonnet?"

"Yes," answered Rose.

"Did you tell her that it was all finished but the cap frill?" asked Dolly.

"No; because I knew that it was not yet begun, and I could not tell a—a—"

"Lie! I suppose," screamed Dolly, putting her face very close to Rose's, as if to defy her to say the obnoxious word; "is that it."

"Yes," said Rose, courageously.

"Good girl—good girl" said Dolly; "shall have a medal, so it shall;" and cutting a large oval out of a bit of pasteboard, and passing a twine string through it, she hung it round her neck—"Good little Rosy-Posy—just like its conscientious mamma."

"I wish I were half as good as my mamma," said Rose, with a trembling voice.

"I suppose you think that Aunt Dolly is a great sinner!" said that lady.

"We are all great sinners, are we not?" answered Rose.

"All but little Rosy Posy;" sneered Dolly, "she is perfect, only needs a pair of wings to take her straight up to heaven."

"Many a true word is spoken in jest," muttered Daffy, as she waxed the end of a bit of sewing silk, behind the counter.