to London, and ye were so delighted with the shops when the gas was lit."

"If you go into all the family anecdotes that exist in your capacious memory, you must be put to death," he answered; stand it!"

"No," said Liz.

dozen times at least."

we can't

"Now, sister, hasn't she told that anecdote a

Sister, who was just rising to leave the room with Mr. Mortimer, made answer, "that no doubt it had been told before."

"And I am sure I know no reason why I am to forget those old days," said the joyous old woman.

"Ah," said Valentine, "those were happy days, Aunt Christie, when we were young."

"Speak for yourself, laddie," she answered; "for my part I often feel very inconveniently young yet; I feel a spring of youthful joy in me sometimes which is strangely at variance with circumstances. It would be more to my credit if I could repress it, and I'm going to try."

"No, don't, dear," said Mr. Brandon.

"You're just right, love," said Liz.

"Now, Giles," exclaimed the old lady, menacing him with a spoon, "let me alone, and you too, Miss; you don't consider how you crumple my cap, kissing before company! There's Mr. Graham just scandalised, and no wonder."

"Graham feels rather faint at present," observed Mr. Brandon, "but when I tell him that you belong to us all—”

"Yes, to us all," interrupted Lou; "but not to all equally." "Their mother was my niece," said Miss Christie; "and Mr. Grant was a far-away cousin besides."

"Cousins don't count," observed Tom, " cousins."

"So I tell her," said Mr. Brandon.

particularly Scotch

"Don't they?" exclaimed Miss Christie; "well, there's nothing more interesting to an intelligent mind than relationship, if ye consider it rightly. Why, dear me, I can trace the Brandon voice

through fifteen families. Then the Grants all walk as if they'd been drilled. And as to the Mac Queens (my mother was a Mac Queen), I would almost engage to challenge any one of them by the handwriting."

As she appeared to address me, I answered, "Then I hope their characters are as much alike as their writing; for it always seems to me that one can judge so well what people are by how they write."

“Of some qualities one may certainly judge," said Tom; "and of the temper, the amount of energy, and of course the age and sex." Both the Grants and their aunt declared themselves of a contrary opinion, and we were soon in the midst of a vehement discussion,

every one having a letter or two to produce, folding down middle or ends, that only select sentences might be seen; and being entreated to show more, and declining with pretended confusion.

At first Mr. Brandon took no part in the discussion, but after he had seen us guessing, and being generally wrong, and sometimes oddly right, he said with gravity, "I have some writing here that I think very interesting; I would rather it did not go all round the table, but I should like Miss Graham's opinion on it."

He was standing on the rug under his portrait, and one of his sisters proposed to pass the letter across the table to me, but he declined, and coming round to my chair put into my hand an envelope, out of which he had drawn the letter just so far as to show these words, written in a very small and peculiarly delicate female hand :

"My very dear Giles, I am pleased to find that you propose to shorten your stay at-" here the sheet was folded down.

"Am I to read all I can see?" I inquired.

"O, yes, but do not open the sheet, for the letter is confidential." Confidential, indeed, for it ran thus,-"There is nothing that I find so difficult as to do without you, and this feeling increases on me day by day."

That was all, the signature was covered. I wished he had not given me such an affectionate letter to read, especially as he chose to limit the confidence to me.

"What do you think of the writing?" he inquired.

"How very hard that we are not to see it!" exclaimed Valentine. "Is it a lady's hand, Miss Graham?"

"O yes."

"Ah! do I guess whose?

I should rather say so!

Does it ex

press counsel, and a large mind, and extreme delicacy?"

"And a love of gardening and music," cried Louisa, evidently thinking, like Valentine, of some special person.

"I don't know about the gardening," I replied.

"Do you think it is a young lady?" asked Mr. Brandon.

"Yes, I should say so, decidedly; but she has not been taught in a modern school, for the letters are round."

"Round!" exclaimed Valentine; "oh, then I give it up."

"I wish you would say what you think," said Mr. Brandon, "for this writing really is deeply interesting to me. Do you think the writing expressive of a hasty temper?"

"No, it flows-I think it means gentleness, and even spirits. This person is seldom in a hurry, and has done this deliberately. The hand looks as if it had not been much used since the writer left school."

Mr. Brandon really looked unutterable things; but I thought it was quite fair that he should suffer for having handed out such a letter.

"Do you think the writer's disposition likely to be affectionate?" he inquired.

"I can form that opinion without any aid from the writing."

"Dear me, this mystery grows very interesting," exclaimed Lou. "Ah!" said Mr. Brandon, with a sigh that I thought affected, "you mean that you could form that opinion from the words; but the writer's actions leave me no room to doubt that these but feebly reflect the heart."

"Why, he's actually sentimental," cried Liz. "Giles, can this be you?"

"May I express a hope, then, that the affection is reciprocal," I answered; but I thought he should not have made such a letter a matter for discussion: it was evidently a letter from a lady, and not from one of the ladies of the family, for I had seen their writing.

"Reciprocal!" he exclaimed. "There is no one breathing whom I care for half so much! Do you admire my good taste?" I hesitated.

"You think I had better not have shown it?"

"I think such letters ought not to be shown, unless their writers may be supposed to have no objection. I think this one must have been written in confidence."

"Oh," he answered, holding out his hand for it; the same writer which I religiously keep to myself. but they are enough to spoil any man. Well, Graham, will you come?

me.

this aloud."

66

I have others by

This is nothing;

They have completely spoilt Here, Lou, suppose you read

He tossed the letter lightly on to the table, among his brothers and sisters. It was instantly snatched up; and, while he decamped with Tom, he was followed by cries of "O, you cheat, Giles—you horrid cheat; it's a letter from papa, it's his writing." The rest of the sheet was straightway unfolded and laid before me, and proved to be a loving letter from the old man to the young one, thanking him for having given up, to please him, some intended journeyings. It further related to a certain horse, by name Farmer, who had refused to eat his corn; and to some railway shares, which were to be looked after.

I felt that I had been ignominiously cheated, and wondered that the very circumstance of his showing it to me in the presence of his family had not made me sure it could be nothing of especial

interest.

But I had not much time to think. We all left the dining-room, and Liz and Lou took me upstairs to my room, where they began to inspect some of my gowns which Mrs. Brand had left lying on a sofa.

It must be natural to girls to be sociable—at least, it must be natural to me. The delight I felt in talking cosily to Lizzy and Lou is indescribable. We did not say anything very wise, or very much the reverse; but we speedily became confidential. They told

me they had vainly speculated as to what sort of a girl I should prove to be. I confessed how shy I had felt at the notion of coming among so many strangers. These bygone feelings we laughed at, and had just agreed to address each other by our Christian names, when there was a violent knock at the door.

"Who's there?" said Liz.

The cracked voice responded,

"Ah! I said you were there. What are you doing boxed up with Miss Graham? She's not your visitor a bit more than mine. won't come out soon, I shall come in."

"We are coming down almost directly."

If you

Valentine withdrew. We meant to follow, but some fresh topic of discourse was started, and we stayed, perhaps, ten minutes longer. Another louder knock.

"What do you want, you tiresome boy?" said Lou, now opening the door.

"Why Charlotte, and Dick, and Frank are here; and they have brought the blind pupil."

So down we went, and found these young visitors-two fine youths about eighteen years of age, a very pretty girl, and a blind boy.

I soon found that these were the daughters and pupils of the Vicar. They were all energetic in their lamentations over Valentine's cough; for he, it seemed, when in health, was a pupil at the Vicarage. He was openly assured by the pretty Charlotte that the whole house was in despair at his absence; then one of the pupils administered further comfort by remarking that it never took more than a month to "polish off" the whooping-cough; the other tucked the blind boy under his arm in a really kindly fashion, and they retired, after receiving a present of a little box of eggs from Valentine, which the blind boy touching lightly with his finger-tips, named, and, as it seemed, correctly.

66

"Old Tikey," Valentine afterwards observed, was a horrid coddle. Fellows must have the whooping-cough some time, and yet Old Tikey had actually sent him home on account of two boys who had not yet taken it. And isn't that sneak, Prentice, delighted?" he added. "Who is Prentice ?" I asked.

"He's a most odiously conceited fool;-he's an intolerable young prig."

"Come," said Liz; "this is nothing but rank jealousy. Prentice is reading for Cambridge-he is Val's rival, Dorothea."

"He is only just nineteen-five months older than I am-and he is engaged to Charlotte. Only think of that!"

"Silly fellow!"

"Old Tikey doesn't know. Do you think those fellows who called just now look older than I?"

"Older? No, younger.

gether."

Much shorter, and more boyish alto

"Ah! they are small for their years; but the oldest of those has made an offer! There never was such a muff in this world; we can make him do anything."

"It's quite true, I assure you," said Lou, seeing me look amazed.

"But I suppose he made it of his own free will?" I inquired.

'Nothing of the sort; we made him do it. It was just after Prentice had informed me of his engagement to Charlotte, and we were all bursting with rage at the airs he gave himself. And so, by a happy inspiration, I said to Grainger—that fellow whom you have just seen-Well, Dick, I suppose your affair will be coming off soon?' And we actually made him believe-(that we might make Prentice appear the more ridiculous, you know)-we made him believe that he had paid great attention to Old Tikey's sister. She is fat; more than forty; and we made him believe that he had stolen her affections, and must take the consequence."

"If I were you, I would keep these school-boy delinquencies to myself," said Liz.

"Very well, then; talk and amuse Miss Graham yourself."

A silence naturally followed, which I broke after awhile by asking for the end of the anecdote.

66

"Oh," said Valentine, two of the other fellows and I talked seriously to him. He is such a jolly muff. We said, 'Grainger, we could not have thought it of you!' And we actually worked him up to such a pitch that he vowed he would do it. But he was very miserable. He said it made him so low to think of a long engage

ment; and, besides, what would his mother say? We told him he ought to have thought of that before. We made a great deal of his always having carried her prayer-book to church for her. We said, that perhaps he was not aware that this was considered the most pointed attention you could possibly pay to a woman! Well, then we talked of honour, you know."

"What a shame!"

"Yes,” replied Valentine," so it was; but then there was Prentice. We felt that we could not live in the same house with him, unless we could make him feel small. We were strolling under a clump of trees, not far from Old Tikey's house; and when we had worked at Grainger for some time, he suddenly darted off. And an old woman, who lives in a cottage close by, came out and talked to me about my cough, and said if I took three hairs out of a drover's dog's tail, just as he was going to London after the drover, he would carry the cough away with him. And those simple remedies,' she observed, 'would