Still, even trifles of this kind we should form the habit of avoiding; for they may seriously annoy at a time when we dream not that they are thought of for a moment.

Think how, just as you had seated yourself at the table, tired and hungry, you would like to be called away, your food scarcely tasted, to perform some task, the urgency of which to you, at least, was very questionable ?" "I was wrong I know, mother," the child replied, "and you are right." All this was new and strange doctrine to Helen Armitage, but she was enabled to see, from the manner in which Mrs.Milnor represented the subject, that it was true doctrine.

As this became clear to her mind, she saw with painful distinctness the error that had thrown disorder into every part of her mother's household; and more than this, she inwardly resolved, that, so far as her action was concerned, a new order of things should take place.

In this she was in earnest--so much so, that she made some allusion to the difference of things at home, to what they were at Mrs.Milnor's, and frankly confessed that she had not acted upon the kind and considerate principles that seemed to govern all in this well-ordered family.
"My dear child!" Mrs.Milnor said to her, with affectionate earnestness, in reply to this allusion--"depend upon it, four-fifths of the bad domestics are made so by injudicious treatment.

They are, for the most part, ignorant of almost every thing, and too often, particularly, of their duties in a family.