Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/125

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THE SCENE CHANGES.
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he comes home and finds it not done, he'll find fault with Julius—I don't know how I am ever to make a gentleman of Jule if he sets him about such jobs."

Another scream from the stairs, and a request that "Ma" would send Lucy to do up the parlour, for Miss Aurelia expected Mr. Smith to call. Mr. Smith was a young sprig of the law from the country, of whom Miss Aurelia flattered herself she had made a conquest at her dancing-master's public the preceding evening. The mother answered in the affirmative. "Be spry," she said to Lucy, "and make a fire in the grate, and polish the brasses, and dust off the shades over the flowers, and reel the sofy up to the fire. Aurely is very pa'ticular when she expects her beaux—and if Mr. Smith should stay to dinner, fix the dinner-table just as they fix it at Miss Ardley's; and I expect you won't eat with us, Lucy, because Aurely has feelings about such things."

Lucy had feelings too, but not about "such things." Her mother had early taught her that feelings were given to quicken the affections and awaken the sympathies, and not to feed pride, vanity, and selfishness. Her feelings were no way affected by sitting or not sitting at Mrs. Simson's table. "Your respectability must come from your own character and deportment, my child, and not from the place you occupy," her mother had said; and Lucy, in her short experience, had seen vulgarity at a gentleman's table, and witnessed refinement in the lowest seat of the household.

Lucy had "feelings," and once every day they were called forth by her friend Charles Lovett, who brought her tidings from home, which he al-