Mr. Rollins had paid for the instruction of these girls at the village school, in which they had been taught all sorts of plain work; had mastered all the difficulties of Mavor's Spelling-book, had read the Bible, the Dairyman's Daughter, Pilgrim's Progress, and Goldsmith's abridged History of England, and all the books in the shape of penny tracts and sixpenny novels they could borrow from their playmates when school was over.
Sophy, the elder of the two, who was eighteen years of age, had been apprenticed for the last two years with a milliner of an inferior grade in the little seaport town; and her term of service having expired, she had commenced making dresses in a humble way for the servants in respectable families. She had to work very hard for a very small remuneration, for the competition was very great, and without lowering her prices to nearly one-half, she could not have obtained employment at all. She could easily have procured a service as a nurse-girl or housemaid in a gentleman's family, but the novels she had read during her residence with Mrs. Makewell, the milliner, had filled her head with foolish notions of her own beauty and consequence, and given her ideas far above her humble station, quite unfitting her to submit patiently to the control of others. Besides being vain of a very lovely face, she was very fond of dress. A clever hand at her business, she contrived to give a finish and style to the homely materials she made, and which fitted so well her slender and gracefully-formed person.
Her love of admiration induced her to lay out all her scanty earnings in adorning herself, instead of reserving a portion to help to provide their daily food. Her sewing was chiefly done at home, and she attended upon her mother and sister, and prepared their frugal meals during the absence of Mary, whose situation in the "Brig's Foot" she considered a perfect degradation.
Such was Sophy Grimshawe, and there are many like her in the world. Ashamed of poverty, in which there is no real disgrace, and repining at the subordinate situation in which she found herself placed, she made no mental effort to improve her condition by frugal and patient industry, and a cheerful submission to the Divine will. She considered her lot hard, the dispensations of Providence cruel and unjust. She could not see why others should be better off than herself; that women with half her personal attractions should be permitted to ride in their carriages, while she had to wear coarse shoes and walk through the dust. She regarded every well-dressed female who passed the door with feelings of envy and hatred, which embittered her life, and formed the most painful feature in the poverty she loathed and despised.
Charlotte, the sick girl, was two years younger than Sophy, and very different in person, mind, and character. A fair, soft, delicate face, more winning than handsome, but full of gentleness and sweetness, was a perfect transcript of the pure spirit that animated the faithful heart in which it was enshrined. She might have been described in those charming lines of Wordsworth, as—
"The sweetest flower that ever grew
Beside a cottage door."
Contented in the midst of poverty, happy in the consciousness of moral improvement, patient under suffering, and pious without cant, or affectation of superior godliness, she offered, under the most painful circumstances, a rare example of Christian resignation to the will of God.
While reading the Gospel at school, as a portion of her daily task, it had pleased the All-Wise Dispenser of that blessed revelation to man, to open her eyes to the importance of those noble truths that were destined to set her free from the bondage of sin and death. She read, and believing that she had received a message from the skies, like the man who found the pearl of great price, she gave her whole heart and soul to God, in order to secure such an inestimable treasure. The sorrows and trials of her lowly lot were to her as stepping-stones to the heavenly land, on which all her hopes were placed, and she regarded the fatal disease which wasted her feeble frame, and which had now confined her to the same bed with her mother, as the means employed by God to release her from the sufferings of earth, and open for her the gates of heaven. How earnestly, yet how tenderly, she tried to inspire her afflicted mother with the same hopes that animated her breast! She read to her, she prayed with her, and endeavoured to explain in the best way she could that mysterious change which had been wrought in her own soul, and which now, on the near approach of death, filled her mind with inexpressible joy.
This reading of the Scriptures was a great consolation to the poor widow, and one day she remarked in a tone of deep regret and with many tears—
"Who will read the Bible to me, Charlotte, when you are gone? Mary cannot read, and if she could, who could understand what she read, and Sophy hates everything that is serious, and is too selfish to trouble herself to read aloud to me."