"You must not wish that, dear Margaret; for however much I might like to have you, I know that it is neither right nor natural that you should be separated from your parents and sister, even if they would permit it, which I am quite sure they would not. Besides, Margaret, you must remember that God places us all in those stations which it is best for us to occupy; if it were not for some right and good purpose, you would not be here with difficulties to overcome, and temptations to withstand, any more than I should be living alone in the Thatched Cottage, often regretting that you are not still there, to help me make clothes for the poor people, in the long winter evenings, or to go on Sunday afternoons to read the Bible to poor old Goody."

Margaret smiled at this allusion to her old friend, and said, "Aunty, I wish I had something to send Goody when you go back."

"Well, cannot you buy her something? I recollect that before you came, you were afraid that you should have too much pocket money; how have you spent it?"

"Well, at first," said Margaret, “I began to save it, and thought I would give some to an old woman who weeds in the garden, to buy her a new gown; but Ada laughed at me, and mamma said that she would give her a new gown if she wanted one, and then I thought I would still save it up for the Missionary Society without saying a word to anybody, but somehow I did not do it, and I have spent it every week ever since; that was not right either, was it, aunt Ellen?

"You had power to do as you pleased with your own, my love," replied her aunt; "still I think that if you had applied a part of your money, at least, to good or useful purposes, instead of spending the whole on yourself, you would have done right and have felt more satisfaction; what have you bought with it?"

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Only little things that I don't care anything about; and now I have not even one shilling to send poor old Goody," she added mournfully; "but I won't do it again, aunt Ellen; I will save it until I come to see you, if I cannot find any thing else to do

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with it, and then you will help me to spend it, won't you?”

"I daresay I shall feel no objection," replied Mrs. Shirley, smiling, "but perhaps you may be able to find something else to do with it before then.

CHAPTER IX.

Ir is by no means so easy, when we have carelessly wandered into a wrong path, to retrace our steps, as it would have been, even though the task had proved one of labour and difficulty, to have kept in the narrow road from the first. Margaret found that it was even so with her; had she kept on steadily as she first began, she would have met with far fewer difficulties than now beset her steps when she again set forward. Ada was less inclined to love her, and to think favourably of her than, notwithstanding her many spoiled and selfish ways, she had once been. Miss Gregory, though she liked Margaret as an attentive and clever pupil, took little or no interest in the moral or religious training of those committed to her care, and was, therefore, not at all likely

either to understand or to assist her in the struggles with herself, in which she was again so often engaged. Her father saw but little, and knew less of her, while her mother, in whose heart Ada undoubtedly held the first place, quite lost sight, in the remembrance of their former disagreements, and the unkindnesses of which her darling had so often complained, of the daily efforts which Margaret was now making to please and obey her, not only as regarded Ada, but in many other little ways, which, though hardly worth speaking of, would yet have shown, to a careful observer, the goodness and purity of motive which gave rise to them.

Thus weeks and months rolled on, bringing, as far as outward appearances went, but little change in Margaret's daily life, whatever change there was in herself. Day by day she was learning, though by slow degrees, to see how sinful and weak she was, and therefore to trust less to her own unaided strength, to seek more and more for Divine teaching, and to lean more and more upon the Divine arm for help and guidance.