accent on the word; "he was wrapping her up like a mummy! But though I made a great push for it I could not come up with him; there was such a crowd. I never saw a fuller house. I called out to him, and once I thought he had heard, for he looked round and caught my eye; but it could not have been so, for he posted on faster than before!"

At this in happier moments Belinda would have smiled. She cannot smile

now.

"Have not you seen anything of him?" asks the other, exploring the girl's wan face with the unflinching inquisitiveness of her eyes; "has not he been to call-not once? I must tell him that there is a hole in his manners; I shall be sure to fall in with him again before long, and I will send him here. I will tell him that you expect him."

"You will not," says Belinda hoarsely, stretching out her hand and turning livid. "I mean," helped back to selfpossession by the expression of astonished 4 VOL. II.

21

and eager curiosity painted all over her guest's broad face-"I mean that I think I had rather you did not. If he wishes to call, he-he-knows our address."

T is next day. Outside, snow is falling; but it is flabby, irreso

lute, large-flaked snow, that melts as it reaches the slushy street, and makes it slushier still. Mrs. Churchill is standing by the window, eyeing the weather with disgust, and Sarah and the dogs are seated higgledy-piggledly on the hearthrug.

"This is what we are to expect for the next five months!" cries Mrs. Churchill, addressing this exasperated remark partly to the outside mud and mirk, and partly to her grand-daughter.

Neither heeds it. Sarah's whole attention, indeed, is occupied in bribing Punch,

by a sweet biscuit brought up from luncheon, to the performance of the most striking in his repertoire of tricks, an affecting representation of death; which, when contrasted with his usual superabundant life, is much admired by strangers, and indeed by his own family.

It is, however, the one of his accomplishments for which he himself has the least partiality. The command to die has to be reiterated many times before he at length rolls reluctantly over on his side; and even then, as he looks up every half a second and jumps up every second, a good deal of the repose of death has to be supplied by the spectator's imagination.

"What a climate!" pursues Mrs. Churchill in angry ejaculation. "Good heavens, Sarah, why do you let Jane make such a dreadful noise ?"

She may well ask. Jane, seated on her haunches, is volunteering, in a loud series of forward barks, to die, to beg, to trust, to dance-to do anything of which she is utterly incapable, in order to divert

to herself the attention monopolised by Punch.

Slutty, with her usual poor-spiritedness, has crawled away under a chair in sulky annoyance at her brother's social success.

"How anyone that can help it spends the winter in England, is more than I can imagine!" pursues the old lady, shivering back to the fire. "If we were rid of Belinda we would go abroad."

"Why should not Belinda go too?No," holding up a finger in severe prohibition of Punch's premature resurrection; 66 dead! dead! head down! dead!"

"I could not possibly afford it; and besides," with a shrug," she would spoil the whole thing; she is such a wet blanket."

Everybody cannot be always on the grin like you and me," answers Sarah with surly disrespect.

"We would go to the South," says Mrs. Churchill, perfectly unmoved by her granddaughter's want of reverence, to which, indeed, she is thoroughly accustomed, her bright old eye lightening at the notion of a