But these tempting offers would still have
left her mother with her uncles, and she spurned them all.
CHAPTER V.
A FRIEND IN NEED.
One day, as Miss Pillbody was riding up Broadway, in tending to visit a
Teachers' Agency for the sixteenth time, she accidentally made the
acquaintance of a middle-aged lady, who talked a great deal upon the
slightest provocation, trifled sadly with grammar and pronunciation, and
was excessively friendly and amiable. The diamonds in her ears and on
her fingers, and her overdone and gaudy style of dressing, were some
indication, though not a convincing one, that she was a woman of wealth;
and Miss Pillbody made bold to ask her if she knew anybody who wanted a
private teacher in her family.
The lady said she did not, "unless," she added, laughing very loud at
the humor of the suggestion, "you come into my family, and learn me
something."
The remark was unpremeditated, but, the moment it was made, the lady
seemed to be greatly struck with its force, and immediately followed it
up with the question, "Do you s'pose you could learn grammar and
pronunciation, and how to talk French, to a grown-up woman like me?"
Miss Pillbody thought the lady with the diamonds was joking, and laughed
by way of reply.
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