I have always looked upon her as a sort of a charwoman, working about from house to house, doing anything that people hired her to do." "That's just what those Haverleys want," said Miss Panney.

"At present, everything is charwork at their place, and as to their food, I don't suppose they think much about it, so that they get enough.

At their age they can eat anything." "How old is Miss Haverley ?" asked Dora.
"Miss Haverley!" repeated Miss Panney, "she's nothing but a girl, with her hair down her back and her skirts a foot from the ground.

I call her a child." A shadow came over the soul of Miss Bannister.
Would it be possible, she thought, to maintain, with a girl who did not yet put up her hair or wear long skirts, the intimacy she had hoped to maintain with Mr.Haverley's sister?
Very much the same idea was in the mind of Miss Panney, but she thought it well to speak encouragingly.

"I wish, for her brother's sake, the girl were older," said she: "but housekeeping will help to mature her much more quickly than if she had remained at school.