"And you will?" asks the other, timidly.
"I always keep my promises, Esther, I hope" (with a slight expressive accent on the I and my).
"When will you begin?—soon?—at once? to-morrow?" cries the girl, eagerly.
Mrs. Brandon hesitates: "I must first know for what sort of employment you wish—for what sort you are best suited?"
"I am suited for nothing," she answers, despondently; "but that must not deter me. If nobody did any work but what they were fitted for, three quarters of the world would be idle."
"Would you be inclined to take a situation as governess, if one could be found for you in a respectable pious family?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know enough, and I have no accomplishments. I can read a few pages of 'Racine' or 'Télémaque' without applying very often to the dictionary; modern French, with its colloquialisms and slang, baffles me; and I can play a few 'Etudes' and 'Morceaux de Salon' in a slipshod, boarding-school fashion; but these extensive requirements would hardly be enough."
Mrs. Brandon pauses in consideration. "There are so few occupations open to ladies," she remarks, with an emphasis on the word. "Most professions are closed up by our sex, and all trades by our birth and breeding."
"When one is a pauper, one must endeavour to forget that one ever was a lady," answers Esther, rather grimly; "my gentility would not stand in the way of my being a shoeblack, if women ever were shoeblacks, and if they paid one tolerably for it."
"Would you like to try dressmaking?" inquires her companion, rather doubtfully.