Upon the work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and cloth for patches.

But Mrs.Leslie was not actually working,--she was preparing to work; she had been preparing to work for the last hour and a half.

Upon her lap she supported a novel, by a lady who wrote much for a former generation, under the name of "Mrs.Bridget Blue Mantle." She had a small needle in her left hand, and a very thick piece of thread in her right; occasionally she applied the end of the said thread to her lips, and then--her eyes fixed on the novel--made a blind, vacillating attack at the eye of the needle.

But a camel would have gone through it with quite as much ease.

Nor did the novel alone engage Mrs.Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted herself to scold the children, to inquire "what o'clock it was;" to observe that "Sarah would never suit;" and to wonder "why Mr.Leslie would not see that the work-table was mended." Mrs.Leslie has been rather a pretty woman.