Her father had married again, and Babette was keeping house with another
woman of talent.
[Illustration: HER VERY YOUTH PLEADED FOR HER.]
Babette had taken to the pen. Her very youth at first pleaded for her
with editors, and she got some work. Then more came; but never quite
enough. Now she wrote stories for children and for the "young person,"
conducted a "Children's Column" in a weekly paper, supplied "Answers to
Correspondents" upon a startling variety of absurd questions, and just
contrived to live thereby.
Babette's friend had been reared in the lap of luxury until a woeful
year in the City made her father a bankrupt, and sent her to earn her
living as a teacher of singing. They ought to have some advice to give.
Then there was Sarah Griffin--"plain Sarah," as some of the unkind had
chosen to call her at school. She was one of nine girls, and when her
father died suddenly, and was found to have made but poor provision for
his family, she had been thankful to find a place in a shop where an
association of ladies endeavoured to get a sale for the work of
"distressed gentlewomen."
She also ought to know something of the world. Perhaps, she, too, could
offer some suggestion as to how the life of a poor aimless thing like
Claudia Haberton might be animated by a purpose.
But they all lived in London, the very place, as Claudia felt, where
women of spirit and of "views" should be.
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