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All these wants were forgotten the following Christmas, when her father brought home a little Welsh girl, the daughter of a respectable man whom he had employed there, and who had bequeathed her and the few hundreds he had saved, to the care of a master whom he justly deemed honourable and liberal. She was about a year older than Maria, pretty, artless, gentle, and affectionate, but little informed and wholly devoid of accomplishment. It was the great joy of Maria's heart to give and to love, and she seized on Ellen Powis in a twofold sense, for the purpose of expending upon her all the good in her power. The aid bestowed on the lovely little orphan was returned sevenfold in her own improvement—the little mad cap Irish, and the untaught Welsh girl, became every day more attached to each other, and so forward in their education as to attract the admiration of all who knew them.

This was at present, perhaps, rather a sensible, than a polished, circle—few old families resided in the immediate neighbourhood of a manufacturing town, but the only two who came under this description, and who had always held themselves aloof from all connection with the inhabitants of B—— (whatever their wealth or local influence) visited Mrs. Falconer immediately on her arrival, and treated her not less with marked respect as one of themselves, than with that affectionate interest her person, manners, and situation were calculated to excite. These were General and Mrs. Birchett, an elderly couple, whose children were dispersed by marriage and profession abroad in the world, and Sir James and Lady Trevannion, a young couple, married within a year or two, of amiable manners and good disposition, although continuing to hold a strong line of demarcation with their plebeian neighbourhood, which returned with interest every indication of pride or contempt.