time we called Mary Wigley Miss Kilmansegg,
when talking to each other. She was
a pretty, sweet-looking girl, and so long as
she sat still she looked unusually attractive;
but when she walked, and you saw her
obvious limp, or heard the stump of her
wooden leg, you no longer wondered that
she was unmarried, for she was poor as
well, and very far above her present
station. She was altogether unsuited for the
business they had commenced, for she had
lived in a kind of elegant seclusion until her
father's death; indeed he impoverished
himself to surround her with recreations and
luxuries, to prevent her feeling her deprivation.
Excepting that she had quite an artistic
appreciation of the harmonies and contrasts
of colours, which enabled her to arrange the
windows and showrooms with great skill, she
had not a single qualification for her work.
I have noticed her face flush painfully at the
too openly expressed pity of their customers;
and their whims and caprices in dress used
to surprise and annoy her. Mrs. Wigley,
however, was a thorough, clever business woman.
She had been a tradesman's daughter, and
the fluctuations and anxieties of business
were like a game of chance to her. She soon
established herself in the good graces of the
ladies of our town; and, though my
husband preached a very powerful sermon on
dress (which I made him put off for some
months, lest it should injure the strangers),
it had no chance against Mrs. Wigley's
taste, and the pews in our chapel looked
like the gorgeous flower-beds in a summer
garden.

"Mary Wigley soon became one of my
dearest friends; she knew a great deal more
than I did, and was very accomplished in
music and painting, and it really was an
incongruity to think of her sitting behind a
counter all her life. I remember her coming
to sit with me one evening after my little
Mary was born, when my husband had an
appointment at a missionary meeting. I
suppose we were in an unusually happy frame
of mind that evening, for my husband was
glad to see me up again, and he paid me some
of those quiet tender attentions which we
who are married, understand so well, and
being few and far between, prize so highly.
We made no stranger of Mary, and she sat
smiling at our affectionate expressions to one
another. But when he was gone, and I
returned to the study after seeing the children
in bed, I found her burying her face in her
hands, and crying. Of course I insisted on
knowing the cause, and among other things
she said, I distinctly remember this:

"' If any human influence would make me
great or good as a woman, it would be the
guardianship of a child of my own—a woman's
nature is only half developed till she is a
mother.'

"What a beautiful remark, and so true,"
interrupted Mrs. Turner, with tears in her
eyes. (She was notorious for neglecting her
children.)

"' I said it was true,' resumed our minister's
wife, "and I told her that all my powers of
mind and body were doubled by it. 'My
husband's love,' I said, ' and my children's
dependence make me precious to myself.'

"' And you ask me why I cry,' she
answered, ' when I feel how I could rejoice in
these domestic ties, and know I shall never
have them. Life is very monotonous and
wearisome when one has no interest in the
future.'"

"She should have had more independence
and self-respect," murmured our spinster
friend.

Without noticing her, the minister's wife
continued:

"She looked dreamily into the fire, and
with a pretty tremulous motion shook the
tears from her dark eyelashes. I could not
tell her I thought she would ever be married,
because men marry to be helped, or to be
amused, or to have some one to be proud of;
and she was a cripple with no money. Even
my husband said a wooden leg would be a
serious obstacle to any one falling in love.

"The morning after this conversation, Mary
went with her mother to Manchester to
purchase goods for the spring fashions; it was
quite a painful ordeal to Mary, for she could
not endure traversing warehouse after
warehouse, and ascending and descending the
innumerable flights of stairs, with the stump
of her wooden leg upon the bare boards
everywhere announcing her approach; it annoyed
her to see people look round to see who was
coming, and it really seemed as if she never
could reconcile herself to the duties imposed
upon her.

"The last day had passed, and she was
walking wearily homewards, congratulating
herself in having finished the business that
brought them from their quiet country town;
she lingered for a minute to look at an
engraving which had caught her artistic eye,
when a gentleman, standing behind her,
placed a letter in her hand, said hurriedly,
' Let me beg of you to grant my request; '
and, before she could recover her self-possession,
was lost in the crowd, passing and
repassing in the thronged street.

"Mary hastened on her way to the lodgings
where she expected to find her mother; and
briefly recounting her adventure, opened the
letter with curiosity. It contained the
following lines:

"'If the young lady who receives this note will
kindly send her address in the enclosed envelope,
that which may have appeared an obstacle to her
settling in life, may eventually prove to be an
advantage.'

"The astonishment of both Mrs. Wigley and
Mary were indescribable; Mrs. Wigley poured
forth a torrent of questions which Mary was
unable to answer; she had not seen the