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THE CORAL RING. . 207 
" Well, and if we behave well to our parents, 
and are amiable in the family I don't know - 
and yet," said Florence, sighing, " I have often had 
a sort of vague idea of something higher than we 
might become ; yet, really, what more than this i& 
expected of us ? what else can we do ? " 
" I used to read, in old-fashioned novels, about 
ladies visiting the sick and the poor," replied Ed- 
ward. ^' You remember Ccelebs in Search of a 
Wife ? " 
" Yes, truly ; that is to say, I remember the 
story part of it, and the love scenes ; but as for all 
those everlasting conversations of Dr. Barlow, Mr. 
Stanley, and nobody knows who else, I skipped 
those, of course. But really, this visiting and 
tending the poor, and all that, seems very well in 
a story, where the lady goes into a picturesque 
cottage, half overgrown with honeysuckle, and 
finds an emaciated, but still beautiful, woman 
propped up by pillows. But come to the down- 
right matter of fact of poking about in all 
these vile, dirty alleys, and entering little dark 
rooms, amid troops of grinning children, and 
smelling codfish and onions, and nobody knows 
what dear me! my benevolence always evapo- 
rates before I get through. I'd rather pay any 
body five dollars a day to do it for me than to do 
it myself. The fact is, that I have neither fancy 
nor nerve for this kind of thing." 
'' Well, granting, then, that you can do nothing 
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