You know how glad I am to see you; but I shall always understand how it is, if you do not come.

She may often want you when neither you nor I can anticipate it." Mrs.Browne had no great wish to keep Maggie at home, though she liked to grumble at her going.

Still she felt that it was best, in every way, to keep on good terms with such valuable friends; and she appreciated, in some small degree, the advantage which her intimacy at the house was to Maggie.
But yet she could not restrain a few complaints, nor withhold from her, on her return, a recapitulation of all the things which might have been done if she had only been at home, and the number of times that she had been wanted; but when she found that Maggie quietly gave up her next Wednesday's visit as soon as she was made aware of any necessity for her presence at home, her mother left off grumbling, and took little or no notice of her absence.
When the time came for Edward to leave school, he announced that he had no intention of taking orders, but meant to become an attorney.
"It's such slow work," said he to his mother.

"One toils away for four or five years, and then one gets a curacy of seventy pounds a-year, and no end of work to do for the money.

Now the work is not much harder in a lawyer's office, and if one has one's wits about one, there are hundreds and thousands a-year to be picked up with mighty little trouble." Mrs.Browne was very sorry for this determination.