"Then can't we send to town?"

"For six weeks?-that wouldn't be worth while." She gave me a searching look. I felt the little shoes were only an excuse to fret me; she knew much more about the nursery properties than I, and never consulted me but for purposes of her own.

"I'll take them to the shoemaker in the village to be mended," I said, and took up my sewing. Mr. Macnally met my eyes as I looked up in a moment to assure myself that she was gone. They asked me a question so plainly, that I answered involuntarily.

"I can't help it, I owe her everything; and if I didn't, I shouldn't dare to say a word. What should I be, left without her? People must pay the penalty of being inefficient."

"You're not going to let her take you away from here in six weeks?" he said.

"Well, if she does, she may prepare to bury me, for if I go back to that horrible city and live the life I have been living there I shall die. We won't talk of it," and I gave a sort of shudder.

"But the first of September; it is such tyranny;" he repeated.

"I shall die; that will be all," I said.

"Have

"We shall all have resort to the happy dispatch," he said, getting up, and lifting his gun to go. you any idea," he added, pausing as if irresolute, and, to occupy the irresolute moment, bending back the barrel of his gun and looking into it, "have you any idea how much you yield to this sort of pressure? 1 have often wondered."

"I suppose everybody thinks me weak," I said,

biting my lips, and pushing the needle in and out of my work, aimlessly.

"I don't know what everybody thinks; and I don't suppose you mind what I think."

"Why shouldn't I mind? I don't know so many people."

Well, in a very small world I suppose I might count for one," he answered, with a compression of the lips, perhaps from the effort of snapping the gun back into its place, still standing half turned from me.

"Oh, you count for a great deal more than one, in my world. You would be lecturing me, if you knew how much more. You ought always to tell me what you think, if it isn't too bad."

"My thoughts always honor you," he said, with a sudden strange sincerity, more startling from the contrast to his ordinary gayety of manner. This time he turned quite away, and, stooping to pick up his cap which had fallen to the floor, he went towards the steps. We were on the sort of terms when goings and comings were not necessarily attended with much explanation. We should probably meet two or three times again to-day; so while he went down the steps, I silently resumed my sewing, and pondcred deeply on the few words that had escaped him, beginning with the question, Had I any idea how much I yielded to the influence of Sophia? It was very unusual for him to say things like this. I could scarcely remember when he had said anything so personal before. He needn't have told me all his thoughts honored me, for I knew it. He had put me on a very high pedestal, I felt. With all our intimate freedom of intercourse, there was always a silence about myself, that was a sort of

homage I vaguely liked. He could listen; I was almost capriciously confidential sometimes, for he was a person who inspired you to talk about yourself; but he did not respond; he did not ask me questions, he did not lead me further by any words. I felt a great liking for him, a great interest in him. He was cleverer than any one I had ever met before; he was the gayest, brightest element that had ever come into my experience. Delightful as the life was at Happy-go-lucky, it was impossible not to see that it was he who gave to it its greatest charm. In some ways of looking at him, he seemed the embodiment of youth; in others, there was a man's intensity and reticence. I sat with my eyes on my work, when Naomi called up to me:

"Aunt Penelope said you were to come to tea tonight. Did Mr. Macnally tell you?"

"No. Why to-night especially?”

Somebody is coming up from town, who, I can't remember. Mr. Macnally, what's the name of the company that's coming up to-night?"

But Mr. Macnally and Ned were already off, out of hearing. It was Saturday, and Ned was very jealous of infringements of his holiday. His tutor had a sort of conscientiousness about him that one could not help respecting. He probably hated to go tramping off in the sun; but the care of the boy never seemed out of his mind.

"I'm paid for it," he said once, when I reproached him with leaving us. He had not been bitter about it, rather jolly, looking back and saying from over his

gun :

"My own convenience counts as nil:
It is my duty, and I will.”

CHAPTER X.

EN GRANDE TENUE.

"For innocence hath a privilege in her

SOPHI

To dignify arch jests and laughing eyes."
As You Like it.

OPHIA'S unhappy jealousy of the other house did not prevent her desiring me to appear my best when I went there, and though she often looked as if she were capable of powdering the peaches with arsenic, she was always careful that everything should be in the best order, when they came to us. I have known her to work a whole day to prepare a good tea for them, when it seemed as if she hated every member of the family with bitterness enough to kill them. That afternoon, therefore, it did not surprise me to find that, having overheard the invitation Naomi gave me from her aunt, she had spent an hour pressing out a pretty white muslin dress that had been in a trunk all summer, and which was the work of her own hands in the early spring, when we had first talked of coming to the country. She had wonderful skill in such matters, and could reduce a fashion-plate to fact unerringly. The afternoon was so unusually warm that I had slept, and was just arousing myself to the necessity of getting ready to go, when she entered the door with the dress on her arm.

"Should I better wear that?" I said.

"I don't know why not," she said, putting it on the bed. "It's the only warm day we've had, and we mayn't have another. Goodness knows, if I'd thought we were coming to such a place as this, I shouldn't have spent a week's work on your dress."

"It's sweet," I said, touching the flounces affectionately. "Come in by and by and fasten it on for me, won't you? I can't manage that handkerchief alone.”

When my hair was dressed and I was ready for her, she made some excuse and came back into the room, and lifted the dress over my head and fastened it on for me. It was picturesque and pretty, though very simple, made with a short round skirt, with ruffles at the bottom, a round waist, sleeves to the elbows, with ruf fles, and a handkerchief of the same material folded across the bosom. I was slender and tall enough to make it becoming; it was so long since I had seen myself in anything that was, that I flushed with pleasure as I stepped back, and saw the whole effect. Then I glanced guiltily at Sophia to see if she had seen the flush, but she hadn't; she was looking with an expression almost of satisfaction at the details of the dress. Then she went away, and brought me a pair of slippers from the trunk.

66

They'll be dusty by the time I get there," I said insincerely; it really gave me pleasure to think of putting them on.

"You can see yourself what a figure you'd make, with walking boots, in that short dress. Be careful and walk in the path, that's all that's necessary."

Then she raised her eyes, and began to criticise the part that was not the work of her own hands. "You've got your hair too high," she said, and with both hands,