"Was ever such a man!" said Eva; "poor Mary! I'm sorry all this is to come upon you just as you have so much trouble, but just hear now! Mr. Henderson has invited an English gentleman to dinner, and a whole parcel of folks with him. Well, most of them are our folks, Mary—Miss Angie, and Miss Alice, and Mr. Fellows, and Mr. Bolton, and Mr. St. John—of course we must have him."

"Oh, well, we must just do the best we can," said Mary, entering into the situation at once; "but really, the turkey that's been sent in isn't enough for so many. If you'd be so good as to step down to Simon's, ma'am, and order a pair of chickens, I could make a chicken pie, and then there's most of that cold boiled ham left, and trimmed up with parsley it would do to set on table—you'll ask him to send parsley—and the celery's not enough, we shall want two or three more bunches. I'm sorry Mr. Henderson couldn't have put it off, later in the week, till the washing was out of the way," she concluded, meekly, "but we must do the best we can."

Now, Christian fortitude has many more showy and sublime forms, but none more real than that of a poor working-woman suddenly called upon to change all her plans of operations on washing day, and more especially if the greatest and most perplexing of life's troubles meets her at the same moment. Mary's patience and self-sacrifice showed that the crucifix and rosary and prayer-book in her chamber were something more than ornamental appendages—they were the outward signs of a faith that was real.

"My dear, good Mary," said Eva, "it's just sweet of you to take things so patiently, when I know you're feeling so bad; but the way it came about is this: this gentleman is from England, and he is one that Harry wants very much to show attention to, and he only stays a short time, and so we have to take him when we can get him. You know Mr. Henderson generally is so considerate."

"Oh, I know," said Mary, "folks can't always have things just as they want."

"And then, you know, Mary, he thought we should have Maggie here to help us. He couldn't know, you see——"

Mary's countenance fell, and Eva's heart smote her, as if she were hard and unsympathetic in forcing her own business upon her in her trouble, and she hastened to add:

"We sha'n't give Maggie up. I will tell Mr. Henderson about her when he comes home, and he will know just what to do. You may be sure, Mary, he will stand by you, and leave no stone unturned to help you. We'll find her yet."

"It's my fault partly, I'm afraid; if I'd only done better by her," said Mary; "and Mike, he was hard on her; she never would bear curbing in, Maggie wouldn't. But we must just do the best we can," she added, wiping her eyes with her apron. "What would you have for dessert, ma'am?"

"What would you make easiest, Mary?"

"Well there's jelly, blanc-mange or floating island, though we didn't take milk enough for that; but I guess I can borrow some of Dinah over the way. Miss Dorcas would be willing, I'm sure."

"Well, Mary, arrange it just as you please. I'll go down and order more celery and the chickens, and I know you'll bring it all right; you always do. Meanwhile, I'll go to a fruit store, and get some handsome fruit to set off the table."

And so Eva went out, and Mary, left alone with her troubles, went on picking celery, and preparing to make jelly and blanc-mange, with bitterness in her soul. People must eat, no matter whose hearts break, or who go to destruction; but, on the whole, this incessant drive of the actual in life is not a bad thing for sorrow.

If Mary had been a rich woman, with nothing to do but to go to bed with a smelling-bottle, with full leisure to pet and coddle her griefs, she could not have made half as good headway against them as she did by help of her chicken pie, and jelly, and celery and what not, that day.

Eva had, to be sure, given her the only comfort in her power, in the assurance that when her husband came home she would tell him about it, and they would see if anything could be done to find Maggie and bring her back. Poor Mary was full of self-reproach for what it was too late to help, and with concern for the trouble which she felt her young mistress had been subjected to. Added to this was the wounded pride of respectability, even more strong in her class than in higher ones, because with them a good name is more nearly an only treasure. To be come of honest, decent folk is with them equivalent to what in a higher class would be called coming of gentle blood. Then Mary's brother Mike, in his soreness at Maggie's disgrace, had not failed to blame the mother's way of bringing her up, after the manner of the world generally when children turn out badly.

"She might have expected this. She ought to have known it would come. She hadn't held her in tight enough; had given her her head too much; his wife always told him they were making a fool of the girl."

This was a sharp arrow in Mary's breast; because Mike's wife, Bridget, was one on whom Mary had looked down, as in no way an equal match for her brother, and her consequent want of cordiality in receiving her had rankled in Bridget's mind, so that she was forward to take advantage of Mary's humiliation.

It is not merely professed enemies, but decent family connections, we are sorry to say, who in time of trouble sometimes say "aha! so would we have it." All whose advice has not been taken, all who have felt themselves outshone or slighted, are prompt with the style of consolation exemplified by Job's friends, and eager above all things to prove to those in trouble that they have nobody but themselves to thank for it.

So, no inconsiderable part of Mary's bitter herbs this day, was the prick and sting of all the possible things which might be said of her and Maggie by Bridget and Mike, and the rest of the family circle by courtesy included in the term "her best friends." Eva, tender-hearted and pitiful, could not help feeling a sympathetic cloud coming over her as she watched poor Mary's woe-struck and dejected air. She felt quite sure that Maggie had listened, and overheard Aunt Maria's philippic in the parlor, and that thus the final impulse had been given to send her back to her miserable courses; and somehow Eva could not help a vague feeling of blame from attaching to herself, for not having made sure that those violent and cruel denunciations should not be overheard.

"I ought to have looked and made sure, when I found what Aunt Maria was at," she said to herself. "If I had kept Maggie up stairs, this would not have happened." But then, an English literary man, that Harry thought a good deal of, was to dine there that night, and Eva felt all a housekeeper's enthusiasm and pride, to have everything charming. You know how it is, sisters. Each time that you have a social enterprise in hand you put your entire soul into it for the time being, and have a complete little set of hopes and fears, joys, sorrows and plans, born with the day and dying with the morrow.

Just as she was busy arranging her flowers, the door-bell rang, and Jim Fellows came in with a basket of fruit.

"Good morning," he said; "Harry told me you were going to have a little blow-out to-night, and I thought I'd bring in a contribution."

"Oh! thanks, Jim; they are exactly the thing I was going out to look for. How lovely of you!"

"Well, they've come to you without looking, then," said Jim. "Any commands for me? Can't I help you in any way?"

"No, Jim, unless—well, you know my good Mary is the great wheel of this establishment, and if she breaks down we all go too—for I shouldn't know what to do a single day without her."

"Well, what has happened to this great wheel?" said Jim. "Has it a cold in its head, or what?"

"Come, Jim, don't make fun of my metaphors; the fact is, that Mary's daughter, Maggie, has run off again and left her."

"Just what she might have expected," said Jim.

"No; Maggie was doing very well, and I really thought I should make something of her. She thought everything of me, and I could get along with her perfectly well, and I found her very ingenious and capable; but her relations all took up against her, and her uncle came in last night and talked to her till she was in a perfect fury."

"Of course," said Jim, "that's the world's way; a fellow can't repent and turn quietly, he must have his sins well rubbed into him, and his nose held to the grindstone. I should know that Maggie would flare up under that style of operation; those great black eyes of hers are not for nothing, I can tell you."

"Well, you see it was last night, while I was up at papa's, that her uncle came, and they had a stormy time, I fancy; and when Harry and I came home we found Maggie just flying out of the door in desperation, and I brought her back, and quieted her down, and brought her to reason, and her mother too, and made it all smooth and right. But, this morning, came in Aunt Maria—"

Jim gave a significant whistle.

"Yes, you may well whistle. You see, Maggie once lived with Aunt Maria, and she's dead set against her, and came to make me turn her out of my house, if she could. You ought to have seen the look of withering scorn and denunciation she gave Maggie when she opened the door!—and she talked about her so loud to me, and said so much to induce me to turn away both her and Mary, and take another set of girls, that I don't wonder Maggie went off; and now poor Mary is quite broken-hearted. It makes me feel sad to see her go about her work so forlorn and patient, wiping her eyes every once in a while, and yet doing everything for me, like the good soul she always is."

"By George!" said Jim; "I wish I could help her. Well, I'll put somebody on Maggie's track and we'll find her out. I know all the detectives and the police—trust us newspaper fellows for that—and Maggie is a pretty marked article, and I think I may come on the track of her; there are not many things that Jim can't find out, when he sets himself to work. Meanwhile, have you any errands for me to run, or any message to send to your folks? I may as well take it, while I'm about it."

"Well, yes, Jim; if you'd be kind enough, as you go by papa's, to ask Angie to come down and help me. She is always so brisk and handy, and keeps one in such good spirits, too."

"Oh, yes, Angie is always up and dressed, whoever wants her, and is good for any emergency. The little woman has Christmas tree on her brain just now—for our Sunday-school; only the other night, she was showing me the hoods and tippets she had been knitting for it, like a second Dorcas—"

"Yes," said Eva, "we must all have a consultation about that Christmas tree. I wanted to see Mr. St. John about it."

"Do you think there were any Christmas trees in the first centuries," said Jim, "or any churchly precedent for them?—else I don't see how St. John is going to allow such a worldly affair in his chapel."

"Oh, pshaw! Mr. St. John is sensible. He listened with great interest to Angie, the other night, while she was telling about one that she helped get up last year in Dr. Cushing's Sunday-school room, and he seemed quite delighted with the idea; and Angie and Alice and I are on a committee to get a list of children and look up presents, and that was one thing I wanted to talk about to-night."

"Well, get St. John and Angie to talking tree together, and she'll edify him. St. John is O. K. about all the particulars of how they managed in the catacombs, without doubt, and he gets ahead of us all preaching about the primitive Christians, but come to a Christmas tree for New York street boys and girls, in the 19th century, I'll bet on Angie to go ahead of him. He'll have to learn of her—and you see he won't find it hard to take, either. Jim knows a thing or two." And Jim cocked his head on one side, like a saucy sparrow, and looked provokingly knowing.

"Now, Jim, what do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing. Alice says I mustn't think anything or say anything, on pain of her high displeasure. But, you just watch the shepherd and Angie to-night."

"Jim, you provoking creature, you mustn't talk so."

"Bless your heart, who is talking so? Am I saying anything? Of course I'm not saying anything. Alice won't let me. I always have to shut my eyes and look the other way when Angie and St. John are around, for fear I should say something and make a remark. Jim says nothing, but he thinks all the more."

Now, we'll venture to say that there isn't a happy young wife in the first months of wifehood that isn't predisposed to hope for all her friends a happy marriage, as about the summit of human bliss; and so Eva was not shocked like Alice by the suggestion that her rector might become a candidate for the sacrament of matrimony. On the contrary, it occurred to her at once that the pretty, practical, lively, efficient little Angie might be a true angel, not merely of church and Sunday-school, but of a rector's house. He was ideal and theoretic, and she practical and common-sense; yet she was pretty enough, and picturesque, and fanciful enough for an ideal man to make a poem of, and weave webs around, and write sonnets to; and as all these considerations flashed at once upon Eva's mind, she went on settling a spray of geranium with rose-buds, a pleased dreamy smile on her face. After a moment's pause, she said:

"Jim, if you see a bird considering whether to build a nest in the tree by your window, and want him there, the way is to keep pretty still about it and not go to the window, and watch, and call people, saying, 'Oh, see here, there's a bird going to build!' Don't you see the sense of my parable?"

"Well, why do you talk to me? Haven't I kept away from the window, and walked round on tip-toe like a cat, and only given the quietest look out of the corner of my eye?"

"Well, it seems you couldn't help calling my attention and Alice's. Don't extend the circle of observers, Jim."

"See if I do. You'll find me discretion itself. I shall be so quiet that even a humming bird's nerves couldn't be disturbed. Well, good by, for the present."

"Oh, but, Jim, don't forget to do what you can about Maggie. It really seems selfish in me to be absorbed in my own affairs, and not doing anything to help Mary, poor thing, when she's so good to me."

"Well, I don't see but you are doing all you can. I'll see about it right away and report to you," said Jim; "so, au revoir."

Angie came in about lunch time; the two sisters, once at their tea and toast, discussed the forthcoming evening's preparations and the Christmas Sunday-school operations: and Eva, with the light of Jim's suggestions in her mind, began to observe certain signs of increasing intimacy between Angie and Mr. St. John.

"O Eva, I want to tell you: I went to see those poor Prices, Saturday afternoon; and there was John, just back from one of those dreadful sprees that he will have every two or three weeks. You never saw a creature so humble and so sorry, and so good, and so anxious to make up with his wife and me, and everybody all round, as he was. He was sitting there, nursing his wife and tending his baby, just as handy as a woman,—for she, poor thing, has had a turn of fever, in part, I think, brought on by worry and anxiety; but she seemed so delighted and happy to have him back!—and I couldn't help thinking what a shame it is that there should be any such thing as rum, and that there should be people who make it their business and get their living by tempting people to drink it. If I were a Queen, I'd shut up all the drinking-shops right off!"

"I fancy, if we women could have our way, we should do it pretty generally."

"Well, I don't know about that," said Angie. "One of the worst shops in John's neighborhood is kept by a woman."

"Well, it seems so hopeless—this weakness of these men," said Eva.

"Oh, well, never despair," said Angie. "I found him in such a good mood that I could say anything I wanted to, and I found that he was feeling terribly because he had lost his situation in Sanders' store on account of his drinking habits. He had been a porter and errand boy there, and he is so obliging and quick that he is a great favorite; but they got tired of his being so unreliable, and had sent him word that they didn't want him any more. Well, you see, here was an opportunity. I said to him: 'John, I know Mr. Sanders, and if you'll sign a solemn pledge never to touch another drop of liquor, or go into a place where it is sold, I will try and get him to take you back again.' So I got a sheet of paper and wrote a pledge, strong and solemn, in a good round hand, and he put his name to it; and just then Mr. St. John came in and I showed it to him, and he spoke beautifully to him, and prayed with him, and I really do hope, now, that John will stand."

"So, Mr. St. John visits them?"

"Oh, to be sure; ever since I had those children in my class, he has been very attentive there. I often hear of his calling; and when he was walking home with me afterwards, he told me about that article of Dr. Campbell's and advised me to read it. He said it had given him some new ideas. He called this family my little parish, and said I could do more than he could. Just think of our rector saying that."

Eva did think of it, but forbore to comment aloud. "Jim was right," she said to herself.

CHAPTER XXXI.

WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT.

The dinner party, like many impromptu social ventures, was a success. Mr. Selby proved one of that delightful class of English travelers who travel in America to see and enter into its peculiar and individual life, and not to show up its points of difference from old-world social standards. He seemed to take the sense of a little family dinner, got up on short notice, in which the stereotyped doctrine of courses was steadfastly ignored; where there was no soup or fish, and only a good substantial course of meat and vegetables, with a slight dessert of fruit and confectionery; where there was no black servant, with white gloves, to change the plates, but only respectable, motherly Mary, who had tidied herself and taken the office of waiter, in addition to her services as cook.

A real high-class English gentleman, when he fairly finds himself out from under that leaden pale of conventionalities which weighs down elasticity like London fog and smoke, sometimes exhibits all the hilarity of a boy out of school on a long vacation, and makes himself frisky and gamesome to a degree that would astonish the solemn divinities of insular decorum. Witness the stories of the private fun and frolic of Thackeray and Dickens, on whom the intoxicating sense of social freedom wrought results sometimes surprising to staid Americans; as when Thackeray rode with his heels out of the carriage window through immaculate and gaping Boston and Dickens perpetrated his celebrated walking wager.

Mr. Selby was a rising literary man in the London writing world, who had made his own way up in the world, and known hard times and hard commons, though now in a lucrative position. It would have been quite possible, by spending a suitable sum and deranging the whole house, to set him down to a second-rate imitation of a dull, conventional London dinner, with waiters in white chokers, and protracted and circuitous courses; and in that case Mr. Selby would have frozen into a stiff, well preserved Briton, with immaculate tie and gloves, and a guarded and diplomatic reserve of demeanor. Eva would have been nervously thinking of the various unusual arrangements of the dinner table, and a general stiffness and embarrassment would have resulted. People who entertain strangers from abroad often re-enact the mistake of the two Englishmen who traveled all night in a diligence, laboriously talking broken French to each other, till at dawn they found out by a chance slip of the tongue that they were both English. So, at heart, every true man, especially in a foreign land, is wanting what every true household can give him—sincere homely feeling, the sense of domesticity, the comfort of being off parade and among friends; and Mr. Selby saw in the first ten minutes that this was what he had found in the Hendersons' house.

In the hour before dinner, Eva had shown him her ivies and her ferns and her manner of training them, and found an appreciate observer and listener. Mr. Selby was curious about American interiors and the detail of domestic life among people of moderate fortune. He was interested in the modes of warming and lighting, and arranging furniture, etc.; and soon Eva and he were all over the house, while she eloquently explained to him the working of the furnace, the position of the water pipes, and the various comforts and conveniences which they had introduced into their little territories.

"I've got a little box of my own at Kentish town," Mr. Selby said, in a return burst of confidence, "and I shall tell my wife about some of your contrivances; the fact is," he added, "we literary people need to learn all these ways of being comfortable at small expense. The problem of our age is, that of perfecting small establishments for people of moderate means; and I must say, I think it has been carried further in your country than with us."

In due course followed an introduction to "my wife," whose photograph Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his coat-pocket, over the exact region of the heart; and then came "my son," four years old, with all his playthings round him; and, in short, before an hour, Eva and he were old acquaintances, ready to tell each other family secrets.

Alice and Angelique were delightful girls to reinforce and carry out the home charm of the circle. They had eminently what belongs to the best class of American girls,—that noble frankness of manner, that fearless giving forth of their inner nature, which comes from the atmosphere of free democratic society. Like most high-bred American girls, they had traveled, and had opportunities of observing European society, which added breadth to their range of conversation without taking anything from their frank simplicity. Foreign travel produces two opposite kinds of social effect, according to character. Persons who are narrow in their education, sensitive and self-distrustful, are embarrassed by a foreign experience: they lose their confidence in their home life, in their own country and its social habitudes, and get nothing adequate in return; their efforts at hospitality are repressed by a sort of mental comparison of themselves with foreign models; they shrink from, entertaining strangers, through an indefinite fear that they shall come short of what would be expected somewhere else. But persons of more breadth of thought and more genuine courage see at once that there is a characteristic American home life, and that what a foreigner seeks in a foreign country is the peculiarity of that country, and not an attempt to reproduce that which has become stupid and tedious to him by constant repetition at home.

Angelique and Alice talked readily and freely; Alice with the calm, sustained good sense and dignity which was characteristic of her, and Angelique in those sunny jets and flashes of impulsive gaiety which rise like a fountain at the moment. Given the presence of three female personages like Eva, Alice, and Angelique, and it would not be among the possibilities for a given set of the other sex to be dull or heavy. Then, most of the gentlemen were more or less habitués of the house, and somewhat accorded with each other, like instruments that have been played in unison; and it is not, therefore to be wondered at that Mr. Selby made the mental comment that, taken at home, these Americans are delightful, and that cultivated American women are particularly so from their engaging frankness of manner.

There would be a great deal more obedience to the apostolic injunction, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers," if it once could be clearly got into the heads of well-intending people what it is that strangers want. What do you want, when away from home, in a strange city? Is it not the warmth of the home fireside, and the sight of people that you know care for you? Is it not the blessed privilege of speaking and acting yourself out unconstrainedly among those who you know understand you? And had you not rather dine with an old friend on simple cold mutton, offered with a warm heart, than go to a splendid ceremonious dinner party among people who don't care a rush for you?

Well, then, set it down in your book that other people are like you; and that the art of entertaining is the art of really caring for people. If you have a warm heart, congenial tastes, and a real interest in your stranger, don't fear to invite him, though you have no best dinner set, and your existing plates are sadly chipped at the edges, and even though there be a handle broken off from the side of your vegetable dish. Set it down in your belief that you can give something better than a dinner, however good,—you can give a part of yourself. You can give love, good will, and sympathy, of which there has, perhaps, been quite as much over cracked plates and restricted table furniture as over Sèvres china and silver.

It soon appeared that Mr. Selby, like other sensible Englishmen, had a genuine interest in getting below the surface life of our American world, and coming to the real "hard-pan" on which our social fabric is founded. He was full of intelligent curiosity as to the particulars of American journalism, its management, its possibilities, its remunerations compared with those of England; and here was where Bolton's experience, and Jim Fellows's many-sided practical observations, came out strongly.

Alice was delighted with the evident impression that Jim made on a man whose good opinion appeared to be worth having; for that young lady, insensibly perhaps to herself, held a sort of right of property in Jim, such as the princesses of the middle ages had in the knights that wore their colors, and Jim, undoubtedly, was inspired by the idea that bright eyes looked on, to do his devoir manfully in the conversation. So they went over all the chances and prospects of income and living for literary men and journalists in the two countries; the facilities for marriage, and the establishment of families, including salaries, rents, prices of goods, etc. In the course of the conversation, Mr. Selby made many frank statements of his own personal experience and observation, which were responded to with equal frankness on the part of Harry and Eva and others, till it finally seemed as if the whole company were as likely to become au courant of each other's affairs as a party of brothers and sisters. Eva, sitting at the head, like a skillful steerswoman, turned the helm of conversation adroitly, now this way and now that, to draw out the forces of all her guests, and bring each into play. She introduced the humanitarian questions of the day; and the subject branched at once upon what was doing by the Christian world: the high church, the ritualists, the broad church, and the dissenters all rose upon the carpet, and St. John was wide awake and earnest in his inquiries. In fact, an eager talking spirit descended upon them, and it was getting dark when Eva made the move to go to the parlor, where a bright fire and coffee awaited them.

"I always hate to drop very dark shades over my windows in the evening," said Eva, as she went in and began letting down the lace curtains; "I like to have the firelight of a pleasant room stream out into the dark, and look cheerful and hospitable outside; for that reason I don't like inside shutters. Do you know, Mr. Selby, how your English arrangements used to impress me? They were all meant to be very delightful to those inside, but freezingly repulsive to those without. Your beautiful grounds that one longs to look at, are guarded by high stone-walls with broken bottles on the top, to keep one from even hoping to get over. Now, I think beautiful grounds are a public charity, and a public education; and a man shouldn't build a high wall round them, so that even the sight of his trees, and the odor of his flowers, should be denied to his poor neighbors."

"It all comes of our national love of privacy," said Mr. Selby; "it isn't stinginess, I beg you to believe, Mrs. Henderson, but shyness,—you find our hearts all right when you get in."

"That we do; but, I beg pardon, Mr. Selby, oughtn't shyness to be put down in the list of besetting sins, and fought against; isn't it the enemy of brotherly kindness and charity?"

"Certainly, Mrs. Henderson, you practice so delightfully, one cannot find fault with your preaching," said Mr. Selby; "but, after all, is it a sin to want to keep one's private life to himself, and unexposed to the comments of vulgar, uncongenial natures? It seems to me, if you will pardon the suggestion, that there is too little of this sense of privacy in America. Your public men, for instance, are required to live in glass cases, so that they may be constantly inspected behind and before. Your press interviewers beset them on every hand, take down their chance observations, record everything they say and do, and how they look and feel at every moment of their lives. I confess that I would rather be comfortably burned at the stake at once than to be one of your public men in America; and all this comes of your not being shy and reserved. It's a state of things impossible in the kind of country that has high walls with glass bottles around its private grounds."

"He has us there, Eva," said Harry; "our vulgar, jolly, democratic level of equality over here produces just these insufferable results; there's no doubt about it."

"Well," said Jim, "I have one word to say about newspaper reporters. Poor boys! everybody is down on them, nobody has a bit of charity for them; and yet, bless you, it isn't their fault if they're impertinent and prying. That is what they are engaged for and paid for, and kicked out if they're not up to. Why, look you, here are four or five big dailies running the general gossip-mill for these great United States, and if any one of them gets a bit of news before another, it's a victory—a 'beat.' Well, if the boys are not sharp, if other papers get things that they don't or can't, off they must go; and the boys have mothers and sisters to support—and want to get wives some day—and the reporting business is the first round of the ladder; if they get pitched off, it's all over with them."

"Precisely," said Mr. Selby; "it is, if you will pardon my saying it, it is your great American public that wants these papers and takes them, and takes the most of those that have the most gossip in them, that are to blame. They make the reporters what they are, and keep them what they are, by the demand they keep up for their wares; and so, I say, if Mrs. Henderson will pardon me, that, as yet, I am unable to put down our national shyness in the catalogue of sins to be fought against. I confess I would rather, if I should ever happen to have any literary fame, I would rather shut my shutters, evenings, and have high walls with glass bottles on top around my grounds, and not have every vulgar, impertinent fellow in the community commenting on my private affairs. Now, in England, we have all arrangements to keep our families to ourselves, and to such intimates as we may approve."

"Oh, yes, I knew it to my cost when I was in England," said Eva. "You might be in a great hotel with all the historic characters of your day, and see no more of them than if you were in America. They came in close family carriages, they passed to close family rooms, they traveled in railroad compartments specially secured to themselves, and you knew no more about them than if you had stayed at home."

"Well," said Mr. Selby, "you describe what I think are very nice, creditable, comfortable ways of managing."

"With not even a newspaper reporter to tell the people what they were talking about, and what gowns their wives and daughters wore," said Bolton, dryly. "I confess, of the two extremes, the English would most accord with my natural man."

"So it is with all of us," said St. John; "the question is, though, whether this strict caste system which links people in certain lines and ruts of social life, doesn't make it impossible to have that knowledge of one another as human beings which Christianity requires. It struck me in England that the high clergy had very little practical comprehension of the feelings of the lower classes, and their wives and daughters less. They were prepared to dispense charity to them from above, but not to study them on the plane of equal intercourse. They never mingle, any more than oil and water; and that, I think, is why so much charity in England is thrown away—the different classes do not understand each other, and never can."

"Yes," said Harry; "with all the disadvantages and disagreeable results of our democratic jumble in society, our common cars where all ride side by side, our hotel parlors where all sit together, and our tables d'hote where all dine together, we do know each other better, and there is less chance of class misunderstandings and jealousies, than in England."

"For my part, I sympathize with Mr. Selby, according to the flesh," said Mr. St. John. "The sheltered kind of life one leads in English good society is what I prefer; but, if our Christianity is good for anything, we cannot choose what we prefer."

"I have often thought," said Eva, "that the pressure of vulgar notoriety, the rush of the crowd around our Saviour, was evidently the same kind of trial to him that it must be to every refined and sensitive nature; and yet how constant and how close was his affiliation with the lowest and poorest in his day. He lived with them, he gave them just what we shrink from giving—his personal presence—himself."

Eva spoke with a heightened color and with a burst of self-forgetful enthusiasm. There was a little pause afterwards, as if a strain of music had suddenly broken into the conversation, and Mr. Selby, after a moment's pause, said:

"Mrs. Henderson, I give way to that suggestion. Sometimes, for a moment, I get a glimpse that Christianity is something higher and purer than any conventional church shows forth, and I feel that we nominal Christians are not living on that plane, and that if we only could live thus, it would settle the doubts of modern skeptics faster than any Bampton Lectures."

"Well," said Eva, "it does seem as if that which is best for society on the whole is always gained by a sacrifice of what is agreeable. Think of the picturesque scenery, and peasantry, and churches, and ceremonials in Italy, and what a perfect scattering and shattering of all such illusions would be made by a practical, common-sense system of republican government, that would make the people thrifty, prosperous, and happy! The good is not always the beautiful."

"Yes," said Bolton to Mr. Selby, "and you Liberals in England are assuredly doing your best to bring on the very state of society which produces the faults that annoy you here. The reign of the great average masses never can be so agreeable to taste as that of the cultured few."

But we will not longer follow a conversation which was kept up till a late hour around the blazing hearth. The visit was one of those happy ones in which a man enters a house a stranger and leaves it a friend. When all were gone, Harry and Eva sat talking it over by the decaying brands.

"Harry, you venturesome creature, how dared you send such a company in upon me on washing day?"

"Because, my dear, I knew you were the one woman in a thousand that could face an emergency and never lose either temper or presence of mind; and you see I was right."

"But it isn't me that you should praise, Harry; it's my poor, good Mary. Just think how patiently she turned out of her way and changed all her plans, and worked and contrived for me, when her poor old heart was breaking! I must run up now and say how much I thank her for making everything go off so well."

Eva tapped softly at the door of Mary's room. There was no answer. She opened it softly. Mary was kneeling with clasped hands before her crucifix, and praying softly and earnestly; so intent that she did not hear Eva coming in. Eva waited a moment, and then kneeled down beside her and softly put her arm around her.

"Oh, dear, Miss Eva!" said Mary, "my heart's just breaking."

"I know it, I know it, my poor Mary."

"It's so cold and dark out-doors, and where is she?" said Mary, with a shudder. "Oh, I wish I'd been kinder to her, and not scolded her."

"Oh, dear Mary, don't reproach yourself; you did it for the best. We will pray for her, and the dear Father will hear us, I know he will. The Good Shepherd will go after her and find her."

CHAPTER XXXII.

A MISTRESS WITHOUT A MAID.

[Eva to Harry's Mother.]

Valley of Humiliation.

Dear Mother: I have kept you well informed of all our prosperities in undertaking and doing: how everything we have set our hand to has turned out beautifully; how "our evenings" have been a triumphant success; and how we and our neighbors are all coming into the spirit of love and unity, getting acquainted, mingling and melting into each other's sympathy and knowledge. I have had the most delightful run of compliments about my house, as so bright, so cheerful, so social and cosy, and about my skill in managing to always have every thing so nice, and in entertaining with so little parade and trouble, that I really began to plume myself on something very uncommon in the way of what Aunt Prissy Diamond calls "faculty." Well, you know, next in course after the Palace Beautiful comes the Valley of Humiliation—whence my letter is dated—where I am at this present writing. Honest old John Bunyan says that, although people do not descend into this place with a very good grace, but with many a sore bruise and tumble, yet the air thereof is mild and refreshing, and many sweet flowers grow here that are not found in more exalted regions.

I have not found the flowers yet, and feel only the soreness and bruises of the descent. To drop the metaphor: I have been now three days conducting my establishment without Mary, and with no other assistant than her daughter, the little ten-year-old midget I told you about. You remember about poor Maggie, and what we were trying to do for her, and how she fled from our house? Well, Jim Fellows set the detectives upon her track, and the last that was heard of her, she had gone up to Poughkeepsie; and, as Mary has relations somewhere in that neighborhood, she thought, perhaps, if she went immediately, she should find her among them. The dear, faithful soul felt dreadfully about leaving me, knowing that, as to all practical matters, I am a poor "sheep in the wilderness;" and if I had made any opposition, or argued against it, I suppose that I might have kept her from going, but I did not. I did all I could to hurry her off, and talked heroically about how I would try to get along without her, and little Midge swelled with importance, and seemed to long for the opportunity to display her latent powers; and so Mary departed suddenly one morning, and left me in possession of the field.

The situation was the graver that we had a gentleman invited to dinner, and Mary had not time even to stuff the turkey, as she had to hurry off to the cars. "What will you do, Miss Eva?" she said, ruefully; and I said cheerily: "Oh, never fear, Mary; I never found a situation yet that I was not adequate to," and I saw her out of the door, and then turned to my kitchen and my turkey. My soul was fired with energy. I would prove to Harry what a wonderful and unexplored field of domestic science lay in my little person. Everything should be so perfect that the absence of Mary should not even be suspected!

So I came airily upon the stage of action, and took an observation of the field. This turkey should be stuffed, of course; turkeys always were stuffed; but what with? How very shadowy and indefinite my knowledge grew, as I contemplated those yawning rifts and caverns which were to be filled up with something savory—I didn't precisely know what! But the cook-book came to my relief. I read and studied the directions, and proceeded to explore for the articles. "Midge, where does your mother keep the sweet herbs?" Midge was prompt and alert in her researches and brought them to light, and I proceeded gravely to measure and mix, while Midge, delighted at the opportunity of exploring forbidden territory, began a miscellaneous system of rummaging and upsetting in Mary's orderly closets. "Here's the mustard, ma'am, and here's the French mustard, and here's the vanilla, and the cloves is here, and the nutmeg-grater, ma'am, and the nutmegs is here;" and so on, till I was half crazy.

"Midge, put all those things back and shut the cupboard door, and stop talking," said I, decisively. And Midge obeyed.

"Now," said I, "I wonder where Mary keeps her needles; this must be sewed up."

Midge was on hand again, and pulled forth needles, and thread, and twine, and after some pulling and pinching of my fingers, and some unsuccessful struggles with the stiff wings that wouldn't lie down, and the stiff legs that would kick out, my turkey was fairly bound and captive, and handsomely awaiting his destiny.

"Now, Midge," said I, triumphant; "open the oven door!"

"Oh! please, ma'am, it's only ten o'clock. You don't want to roast him all day."

Sure enough; I had not thought of that. Our dinner hour was five o'clock; and, for the first time in my life, the idea of time as connected with a roast turkey rose in my head.

"Midge, when does your mother put the turkey in?"

"Oh! not till some time in the afternoon," said Midge, wisely.

"How long does it take a turkey to roast?" said I.

"Oh! a good while," said Midge, confidently, "'cordin' as how large they is."

I turned to my cook-book, and saw that so much time must be given to so many pounds; but I had not the remotest idea how many pounds there were in the turkey. So I set Midge to cleaning the silver, and ran across the way, to get light of Miss Dorcas.

How thankful I was for the neighborly running-in terms on which I stood with my old ladies; it stood me in good stead in this time of need. I ran in at the back door and found Miss Dorcas in her kitchen, presiding over some special Eleusinian mysteries in the way of preserves. The good soul had on a morning-cap calculated to strike terror into an inexperienced beholder, but her face beamed with benignity, and she entered into the situation at once.

"Cookery books are not worth a fly in such cases," she remarked, sententiously. "You must use your judgment."

"But what if you haven't got any judgment to use?" said I. "I haven't a bit."

"Well, then, dear child, you must use Dinah's, as I do. Dinah can tell to a T, how long a turkey takes to roast, by looking at it. Here, Dinah, run over, and 'talk turkey' to Mrs. Henderson."

Dinah went back with me, boiling over with giggle. She laughed so immoderately over my turkey that I began to fear I had made some disgraceful blunder; but I was relieved by a facetious poke in the side which she gave me, declaring:

"Lord's sakes alive, Mis' Henderson, you's dun it like a bawn cook, you has. Land sake! but it just kills me to see ladies work," she added, going into another chuckle of delight. "Waall, now, Mis' Henderson, dat 'are turkey'll want a mighty sight of doin'. Tell ye what—I'll come over and put him in for you, 'bout three o'clock," she concluded, giving me a matronizing pat on the back.

"Besides," said little Midge, wisely, "there's all the chambers and the parlors to do."

Sure enough! I had forgotten that beds do not make themselves, nor chambers arrange themselves, as always had seemed to me before. But I went at the work, with little Midge for handmaid, guiding her zeal and directing and superintending her somewhat erratic movements, till bedrooms, parlors, house, were all in wonted order. In the course of this experience, it occurred to me a number of times how much activity, and thought, and care and labor of some one went to make the foundation on which the habitual ease, quiet and composure of my daily life was built; and I mentally voted Mary a place among the saints.

Punctually to appointment, Dinah came over and lifted my big turkey into the oven, and I shut the door on him, and thought my dinner was fairly under way.

But the kitchen stove, which always seemed to me the most matter-of-fact, simple, self-evident verity in nature, suddenly became an inscrutable labyrinth of mystery in my eyes. After putting in my turkey, I went on inspecting my china-closet, and laying out napkins, and peering into preserve-jars, till half an hour had passed, when I thought of taking a peep at him. There he lay, scarcely warmed through, with a sort of chilly whiteness upon him.

"Midge," I cried, "why don't this fire burn? This turkey isn't cooking."

"Oh, dear me, mum! you've forgot the drafts is shut," said Midge, just as if I had ever thought of drafts, or supposed there was any craft or mystery about them.

Midge, however, proceeded to open certain mysterious slides, whereat the stove gave a purr of satisfaction, which soon broadened into a roar.

"That will do splendidly," said I; "and now, Midge, go and get the potatoes and turnips, peel them, and have them ready."

The stove roared away merrily, and I went on with my china-closet arrangements, laying out a dessert, till suddenly I smelled a smell of burning. I went into the kitchen, and found the stove raging like a great red dragon, and the top glowing hot, and, opening the oven door, a puff of burning fume flew in my face.

"Oh, Midge, Midge," I cried, "what is the matter? The turkey is all burning up!" and Midge came running from the cellar.

"Why, mother shuts them slides part up, when the fire gets agoing too fast," said Midge—"so;" and Midge manipulated the mysterious slides, and the roaring monster grew calm.

But my turkey needed to be turned, and I essayed to turn him—a thing which seems the simplest thing in life, till one tries it and becomes convinced of the utter depravity of matter. The wretched contrary bird of evil! how he slipped and slid, and went every way but the right way! How I wrestled with him, getting hot and combative, outwardly and inwardly! How I burned my hand on the oven door, till finally over he flounced, spattering hot gravy all over my hand and the front breadth of my dress. I had a view then that I never had had before of the amount of Christian patience needed by a cook. I really got into quite a vengeful state of feeling with the monster, and shut the oven door with a malignant bang, as Hensel and Gretel did when they burned the old witch in the fairy story.

But now came the improvising of my dessert! I had projected an elegant arrangement of boiled custard, with sponge-cake at the bottom, and feathery snow of egg-froth on top—a showy composition, which, when displayed in a high cut-glass dish, strikingly ornaments the table.

I felt entirely equal to boiled custard. I had seen Mary make it dozens of times. I knew just how many eggs went to the quart of milk, and that it must be stirred gently all the time, in a kettle of boiling water, till the golden moment of projection arrived. So I stirred and stirred, with a hot face and smarting hands; for the burned places burned so much worse in the heat as to send a doubt through my mind whether I ever should have grace enough to be a martyr at the stake, for any faith or cause whatever.

But I bore all for the sake of my custard; when, oh! from some cruel, mysterious, unexplained cause, just at the last moment, the golden creamy preparation suddenly separated into curd and whey, leaving my soul desolate within me!

What had I done? What had I omitted? I was sure every rite and form of the incantation had been performed just as I had seen Mary do it hundreds of times; yet hers proved a rich, smooth, golden cream, and mine unsightly curd and watery whey!

The mysteriousness of natural laws was never so borne in upon me. There is a kink in every one of them, meant to puzzle us. In my distress, I ran across to the back door again and consulted Dinah.

"What can be the matter, Dinah? My custard won't come, when I've mixed everything exactly right, according to the rules; and it's all turned to curd and whey!"

"Land sake, missis, it's jest cause it will do so sometimes—dat are's de reason," said Dinah, with the certainty of a philosopher. "Soft custard is jest de aggravatinest thing! you don't never know when it's goin' to be contrary and flare up agin you."

"Well, Dinah," said Miss Dorcas, "you try your luck with some of our fresh morning's milk—you always have luck—and carry it over to Mrs. Henderson."

The dear old angel! No morning cap, however fearful, could disguise her. I fell upon her neck and kissed her, then and there, she was so good! She is the best old soul, mother, and I feel proud of having discovered her worth. I told her how I did hope some time she would let me do something for her, and we had quite a time, pledging our friendship to each other in the kitchen.

Well, Dinah brought over the custard, thick and smooth, and I arranged it in my high cut-glass dish and covered it with foamy billows of whites of egg tipped off with sparkles of jelly, so that Dinah declared that it looked as well "as dem perfectioners could do it;" and she staid to take my turkey out for me at the dinner hour; and I, remembering my past struggle and burned fingers, was only too glad to humbly accept her services.

Dinah is not a beauty, by any of the laws of art, but she did look beautiful to me, when I left her getting up the turkey, and retired to wash my hot cheeks and burning hands and make my toilette; for I was to appear serene and smiling in a voluminous robe, and with unsullied ribbons, like the queen of the interior, whose morning had been passed in luxurious ease and ignorant of care.

To say the truth, dear mother, I was so tired and worn out with the little I had done that I would much rather have lain down for a nap than to have enacted the part of charming hostess. Talk about women meeting men with a smile, when they come in from the cares of business! I reflected that, if this sort of thing went on much longer, Harry would have to meet me with a smile, and a good many smiles, to keep up my spirits at this end of the lever. However, it was but for once; I summoned my energies and was on time, nicely dressed, serene and fresh as if nothing had happened, and we went through our dinner without a break down, for little Midge was a well-trained waiter and did heroically.

Only, when I came to pour the coffee after dinner, I was astonished at its unusual appearance. Our clear, limpid, golden coffee had always been one of our strong points, and one on which I had often received special compliments. People had said, "How do you contrive to always have such coffee?" and I had accepted with a graceful humility, declaring, as is proper in such cases, that I was not aware of any particular merit in it, etc.

The fact is, I never had thought about coffee at all. I had seen, as I supposed, how Mary made it, and never doubted that mine would be like hers; so that when a black, thick, cloudy liquid poured out of my coffee pot, I was, I confess, appalled.

Harry, like a good fellow, took no notice, and covered my defect by beginning an animated conversation on the merits of the last book our gentleman had published. The good man forgot all about his coffee in his delight at the obliging things Harry was saying, and took off the muddy draught with a cheerful zeal, as if it was so much nectar.

But, on our way to the parlor, Harry contrived to whisper,

"What has got into Mary about her coffee to-day?"

"O Harry," I replied, "Mary's gone. I had to get the dinner all alone."

"You did! You wonderful little puss!" said the good boy. "Never mind the coffee! Better luck next time."

And, after we were alone that night, Harry praised and admired me, and I got out the cookery book to see how I ought to have made my coffee.

The directions, however, were not near as much to the point as the light I got from Dinah, who came across on a gossiping expedition to our kitchen that evening, and to whom I propounded the inquiry, "Why wasn't my coffee clear and nice like Mary's?"

"Land sakes, Mis' Henderson, ye didn't put in no fish-skin, nor nothing to clar it."

"No. I never heard of such a thing."

"Some uses fish-skin, and some takes an egg," continued Dinah. "When eggs is cheap, I takes an egg. Don't nobody have no clarer coffee 'n mine."

I made Dinah illustrate her theme by one practical experiment, after the manner of chemical lecturers, and then I was mistress of the situation. Coffee was a vanquished realm, a subjugated province, the power whereof was vested henceforth, not in Mary, but myself.

Since then, we have been anxiously looking for Mary every day; for Thursday is coming round, and how are we to have "our evening" without her? Alice and Angie are both staying with me now to help me, and on the whole we have pretty good times, though there isn't any surplus of practical knowledge among us. We have all rather plumed ourselves on being sensible domestic girls. We can all make lovely sponge cake, and Angie excels in chocolate caramels, and Alice had a great success in currant jelly. But the thousand little practical points that meet one in getting the simplest meal, nobody knows till he tries. For instance, we fried our sausages in butter, the first morning, to the great scandal of little Midge, who instructed us gravely that they were made to fry themselves.

Since "our boys" have found out that we are sole mistresses of the kitchen, they often drop in to lighten our labors and to profess their own culinary accomplishments. Jim Fellows declares that nobody can equal him in coffee, and that he can cook a steak with tomato sauce in a manner unequaled; and Bolton professes a peculiar skill in an omelette; so we agreed yesterday to let them try their hand, and we had a great frolic over the getting up of a composition dinner. Each of us took a particular thing to be responsible for; and so we got up a pic-nic performance, which we ate with great jollity. Dr. Campbell came in with a glass coffee-making machine by which coffee was to be made on table for the amusement of the guests as well as for the gratification of appetite; and he undertook, for his part, to engineer it. Altogether we had a capital time, and more fun than if we had got the dinner under the usual auspices; and, to crown all, I got a letter from Mary that she is coming back to-morrow,—so all's well that ends well. Meanwhile, dear mother, though I have burned my hands and greased the front breadth of my new winter dress, yet I have gained something quite worth having by the experience of the last few days.

I think I shall have more patience with the faults and short-comings of the servants after this; and if the custard is a failure, or the meat is burned, or the coffee doesn't come perfectly clear, I shall remember that she is a sister woman of like passions with myself, and perhaps trying to do her very best when she fails, just as I was when I failed. I am quite sure that I shall be a better mistress for having served an apprenticeship as a maid.

So good by, dear mother.

Your loving

Eva.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A FOUR-FOOTED PRODIGAL.

Theer was dismay and confusion in the old Vanderheyden house, this evening. Mrs. Betsey sat abstracted at her tea, as one refusing to be comforted. The chair on which Jack generally sat alert and cheerful at meal times was a vacant chair, and poor soft-hearted Mrs. Betsey's eyes filled with tears every time she looked that way. Jack had run away that forenoon and had not been seen about house or premises since.

"Come now, Betsey," said Miss Dorcas, "eat your toast; you really are silly."

"I can't help it, Dorcas; it's getting dark and he doesn't come. Jack never did stay out so long before; something must have happened to him."

"Oh, you go 'way, Miss Betsey!" broke in Dinah, with the irreverent freedom which she generally asserted to herself in the family counsels, "never you fear but what Jack'll be back soon enough—too soon for most folks; he knows which side his bread's buttered, dat dog does. Bad penny allers sure to come home 'fore you want it."

"And there's no sort of reason, Betsey, why you shouldn't exercise self-control and eat your supper," pursued Miss Dorcas, authoritatively. "A well-regulated mind"—

"You needn't talk to me about a well-regulated mind, Dorcas," responded Mrs. Betsey, in an exacerbated tone. "I haven't got a well-regulated mind and never had, and never shall have; and reading Mrs. Chapone and Dr. Watts on the Mind, and all the rest of them, never did me any good. I'm one of that sort that when I'm anxious I am anxious; so it don't do any good to talk that way to me."

"Well, you know, Betsey, if you'll only be reasonable, that Jack always has come home."

"And good reason," chuckled Dinah. "Don't he know when he's well off? you jest bet he does. I know jest where he is; he's jest off a gallivantin' and a prancin' and a dancin' now 'long o' dem low dogs in Flower Street, and he'll come back bimeby smellin' 'nuff to knock ye down, and I shall jest hev the washin' on him, that's what I shall; and if I don't give him sech a soapin' and scrubbin' as he never hed, I tell you! So you jest eat your toast, Mis' Betsey, and take no thought for de morrer, Scriptur' says."

This cheerful picture, presented in Dinah's overpoweringly self-confident way, had some effect on Mrs. Betsey, who wiped her eyes and finished her slice of toast without further remonstrance.

"Dinah, if you're sure he's down on Flower Street, you might go and look him up, after tea," she added, after long reflection.

"Oh, well, when my dishes is done up, ef Jack ain't come round, why, I'll take a look arter him," quoth Dinah. "I don't hanker arter no dog in a gineral way, but since you've got sot on Jack, why, have him you must. Dogs is nothin' but a plague; for my part I's glad there won't be no dogs in heaven."

"What do you know about that?" said Mrs. Betsey, with spirit.

"Know?" said Dinah. "Hain't I heard my Bible read in Rev'lations all 'bout de golden city, and how it says, 'Widout are dogs'? Don't no dogs walk de golden streets, now I tell you; got Bible on dat ar. Jack'll hev to take his time in dis world, for he won't get in dere a promenadin'."

"Well then, Dinah, we must make the most we can of him here," pursued Miss Dorcas, "and so, after you've done your dishes, I wish you'd go out and look him up. You know you can find him, if you only set your mind to it."

"To think of it!" said Mrs. Betsey. "I had just taken such pains with him; washed him up in nice warm water, with scented soap, and combed him with a fine-tooth comb till there wasn't a flea on him, and tied a handsome pink ribbon round his neck, because I was going to take him over to Mrs. Henderson's to call, this afternoon; and just as I got him all perfectly arranged out he slipped, and that's the last of him."

"I'll warrant!" said Dinah, "and won't he trail dat ar pink ribbon through all sorts o' nastiness, and come home smellin' wus 'n a sink-drain! Dogs hes total depravity, and hes it hard; it's no use tryin' to make Christians on 'em. But I'll look Jack up, never you fear. I'll bring him home, see if I don't," and Dinah went out with an air of decision that carried courage to Mrs. Betsey's heart.

"Come, now," said Miss Dorcas, "we'll wash up the china, and then, you know, it's Thursday—we'll dress and go across to Mrs. Henderson's and have a pleasant evening; and by the time we come back Jack'll be here, I dare say. Never mind looking out the window after him now," she added, seeing Mrs. Betsey peering wistfully through the blinds up and down the street.

"People talk as if it were silly to love dogs," said Mrs. Betsey, in an injured tone. "I don't see why it is. It may be better to have a baby, but if you haven't got a baby, and have got a dog, I don't see why you shouldn't love that; and Jack was real loving, too," she added, "and such company for me; he seemed like a reasonable creature; and you were fond of him, Dorcas, you just know you were."

"Of course, I'm very fond of Jack," said Miss Dorcas, cheerfully; "but I'm not going to make myself miserable about him. I know, of course, he'll come back in good time. But here's Dinah, bringing the water. Come now, let's do up the china—here's your towel—and then you shall put on that new cap Mrs. Henderson arranged for you, and go over and let her see you in it. It was so very thoughtful in dear Mrs. Henderson to do that cap for you; and she said the color was very becoming."

"She is a dear, sweet little woman," said Mrs. Betsey; "and that sister of hers, Miss Angelique, looks like her, and is so lovely. She talked with me ever so long, the last time we were there. She isn't like some young girls, she can see something to like in an old woman."

Poor good Miss Dorcas had, for the most part, a very exalted superiority to any toilet vanities; but, if the truth were to be told, she was moved to an unusual degree of indulgence towards Mrs. Betsey by the suppressed fear that something grave might have befallen the pet of the household. In a sort of vague picture, there rose up before her the old days, when it was not a dog, but a little child, that filled the place in that desolate heart. When there had been a patter of little steps in those stiff and silent rooms; and questions of little shoes, and little sashes, and little embroidered robes, had filled the mother's heart. And then there had been in the house the racket and willful noise of a school-boy, with his tops, and his skates, and his books and tasks; and then there had been the gay young man, with his smoking-caps and cigars, and his rattling talk, and his coaxing, teasing ways; and then, alas! had come bad courses, and irregular hours, and watchings, and fears for one who refused to be guided; night-watchings for one who came late, and brought sorrow in his coming; till, finally, came a darker hour, and a coffin, and a funeral, and a grave, and long weariness and broken-heartedness,—a sickness of the heart that had lasted for years, that had blanched the hair, and unstrung the nerves, and made the once pretty, sprightly little woman a wreck. All these pictures rose up silently before Miss Dorcas's inner eye as she busied herself in wiping the china, and there was a touch of pathos about her unaccustomed efforts to awaken her sister's slumbering sensibility to finery, and to produce a diversion in favor of the new cap.

The love of a pet animal is something for which people somehow seem called upon to apologize to our own species, as if it were a sort of mésalliance of the affections to bestow them on anything below the human race; and yet the Book of books, which reflects most faithfully and tenderly the nature of man, represents the very height of cruelty by the killing of a poor man's pet lamb. It says the rich man had flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had brought and nourished up, which grew up together with him and his children, which ate of his bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him as a daughter.

And how often on the unintelligent head of some poor loving animal are shed the tears of some heart-sorrow; and their dumb company, their unspoken affection, solace some broken heart which hides itself to die alone.

Dogs are the special comforters of neglected and forgotten people; and to hurt a poor man's dog, has always seemed to us a crime akin to sacrilege.

We are not at all sure, either, of the boasted superiority of our human species. A dog who lives up to the laws of his being is, in our view, a nobler creature than a man who sinks below his: he is certainly a much more profitable member of the community. We suggest, moreover, that a much more judicious use could be made of the city dog-pound in thinning out human brutes than in smothering poor, honest curs who always lived up to their light and did just as well as they knew how.

To say the honest truth about poor Jack, his faults were only those incident to his having been originally created a dog—a circumstance for which he was in no way responsible. He was as warm-hearted, loving, demonstrative a creature as ever wagged a tail, and he was anxious to please his mistress to the best of his light and knowledge. But he had that rooted and insuperable objection to soap and water, and that preference for dirt and liberty, which is witnessed also in young animals of the human species, and Mrs. Betsey's exquisite neatness was a sore cross and burden to him. Then his destiny having made him of the nature of the flesh-eaters, as the canine race are generally, and Miss Dorcas having some strict dietetic theories intended to keep him in genteel figure, Jack's allowance of meat and bones was far below his cravings: and so he was led to explore neighboring alleys, and to investigate swill-pails; to bring home and bury bones in the Vanderheyden garden-plot, which formed thus a sort of refrigerator for the preservation of his marketing. Then Jack had his own proclivities for society. An old lady in a cap, however caressing and affectionate, could not supply all the social wants of a dog's nature; and even the mixed and low company of Flower Street was a great relief to him from the very select associations and good behavior to which he was restricted the greater part of his time. In short, Jack, like the rest of us, had his times when he was fairly tired out of being good, and acting the part of a cultivated drawing-room dog; and then he reverted with a bound to his freer doggish associates. Such an impulse is not confined to four-footed children of nature. Rachel, when mistress of all the brilliancy and luxury of the choicest salon in Paris, had fits of longing to return to the wild freedom of a street girl's life, and said that she felt within herself a "besoin de s'encanailler." This expresses just what Jack felt when he went trailing his rose-colored bows into the society of Flower Street, little thinking, as he lolled his long pink ribbon of a tongue jauntily out of his mouth, and enjoyed the sensation he excited among the dogs of the vicinity, of the tears and anxieties his frolic was creating at home. But, in due time, the china was washed, and Mrs. Betsey entered with some interest into preparations for the evening.