in the place, his eyelids settling over his eyes as if they were already tired. His mother sighed as she looked at him, and went on with her work. "Hetty, don't laugh so loud, you distress your brother."

6

Hetty shrugged her shoulders.

"Mamma, Maurice only pretends. He tries to be ill, to get nice things."

"The leeches, on Friday, were nice things?"

"Well, poor fellow; but he said he hardly felt them." "We had better put them on you. And I know a little girl who had cranberry tart to her dinner to-day, while her brother had only a little milk pudding."

"That was no matter," said Maurice. "Hetty is a child; it is natural she should think much of such matters. They don't affect me.”

"I'm as big as you," said Hetty. "Oh, what a great mind we have not to care for cranberry tart. Little boys like you needn't talk about children, either."

"Hush!" said Mrs. Wetherill. "You are younger than Maurice. You shall not call him a little boy."

"But, mamma, on one of the tombstones it says, Sacred to the memory of Little Harry, who died, aged fourteen.'"

"Erected by his spinster aunt, aged forty, I should think. At only nine years of age a Greek was taken from under the authority of women, and here I am to

have a governess. Oh, dear!" and he sighed deeply and impatiently.

Mr. Wetherill could not help laughing.

"You are a staunch upholder of the Salic law, young gentleman; well, the best thing you can do to remedy the difficulty is to get strong. Then you shall go to a public school, or have a tutor.

for keeping you back."

You know my reason

"Father!" said the boy passionately; and his father looked surprised both at the tone and mode of address, for his children always called him Papa.

Father, if I am weak in body I am strong in mind. It is too bad to be kept back and kept down for a little weakness I may get the better of. Anyway there's Blaise Pascal, and Baxter, and Cruden, all worse sufferers than I, yet look what they did."

But, my boy, it was at great cost, and these men were giants. You should not quote them as proofs of what you may do. Your ambition will wear you out; you will be like the frog that burst in the attempt to be as big as the ox."

"Because she was a frog. But these men were men, and I am a boy, who, if I live, must grow up to be a Oh! I know I am no one," he said, bitterly, as his father smiled; "I can't have much in me to be put under a governess at fourteen."

man.

Yes, but such a governess!"

"I shall yield her respect, because she is a woman, and I suppose I must be polite, but I shall take my own way for all that."

"So shall I," said Hetty.

"And so shall I," said little Tot, who always echoed what she heard the rest say.

"Poor Mrs. Dalgleish! she will have a task, I fear," said Mrs. Wetherill.

"I am sorry," said Mr. Wetherill, gravely, "for she has known great trouble."

A tear started into Maurice's eye, but he brushed it away. Whether the tear sprung from mortification or from sympathy, its successor was forbidden to follow suit. Still the anxious mother looked at the stern, wearied face. She did not wonder much that people generally did not love her boy; but she loved him.

To turn the conversation Mr. Wetherill begun to speak of Mabel.

"She, too, has known great sorrow, poor child. My favourite cousin's orphan child. I wonder if she will make a trouble of having a governess."

The tone implied a rebuke.

“I shall give her half of everything I have," said Hetty.

66

And I will give her all I have," said Totty, not to be

outdone. Maurice did not speak: would he notice his cousin? For a long time he was silent and absorbed, at last he delivered himself in his usual biting tone and manner.

I hope too much to do won't be made of her unless it's to last. I expect she's like other girls I know, but prettier; a flesh and blood beauty. I shan't care for her, I know, by her likeness, and I never yet did care for girls; but if I can do anything to make her happy I will. If she's sad I shall let her be sad, and like her all the better for it; I shan't put her about by making her feel she must make-believe to be cheerful when I'm about. I shall let her be as sad as she likes."

"The deliverance of an oracle!" exclaimed Mr. Wetherill, with a bow.

Hope she'll be much obliged to you," said Hetty, as sharp and precocious in her own way as even her brother was in his.

The oracle having once and again spoken was mute. He had said more this evening than he often said through the day.

Poor, salt, bitter Maurice," thought the occasional visitor, yet "brave, patient, wise Maurice!" secretly whispered the heart of the mother, and, though maternal

affection is often blinded, she was likely to know.

CHAPTER II.

"But many a martyrdom by hearts unshaken
Is yet borne silently in homes obscure;
And many a bitter cup is meekly taken,

And for the strength whereby the just and pure

Thus steadfastly endure,

Glory to Him whose victory won that dower,

Him from whose rising stream'd that robe of spirit power."

MRS. HEMANS.

LIKE a dove who sees its mate suddenly struck lifeless from the spray, and in its fear and sorrow seeks for itself a deeper silence, a deeper shade, was Florence Dalgleish, in her young, sorrowful widowhood. Ah had inclination rather than necessity been consulted, how little would she have chosen to encounter the meeting with strangers, the fulfilment of a prescribed routine of daily duties, the toil of instructing and amusing children, the sacrifice of leisure and freedom; but to these necessity summoned her, and in this necessity she thought to hear the voice of God. Since her husband's death she had been staying in the house of a relative, until she should be able to undertake that for which she was the best fitted-a governess situation-and until an eligible one should