a cheque for a few hundreds as a wedding present. In her case the wedding was so recent that the clothes she wore were a part of her outfit, still quite new and fresh; and the few hundreds intact, reserved for the buying of furniture when she and Jack should set up their house. They had not set up a house yet. The honeymoon, a series of farewell visits, and the voyage, had absorbed the few months of their married life. It was only now, in this Australian up-country township, that they were prepared to undertake the responsibilities of an establishment-to rent a cottage, engage a servant, and unpack their stock of plate and linen and the wedding gifts which had seemed so long unused; and they both looked forward with deep delight to the enjoyment of these matrimonial circumstances. They were a very happy young couple-happy, and hopeful, and content; but still they were a pair of whom a woman would say, "What made that man marry that girl?" and of whom one of the opposite sex would as naturally remark, “How could that girl marry that man?" There seemed no fitness in either to be the complement of the other, except that both were young, well-bred, and amiable.

Of course, it had happened quite naturally in the ordinary way. Though lovers had been fre

quent in the doctor's household, lovers who could afford to have "intentions" had not. There was a Captain Drummond, of the militia, whose presence with the red-coats and the spring flowers had for several seasons (of six weeks each) made Mrs. Primrose's native town a paradise to her; and there was a dark-eyed Austrian count, whom she met when on a visit to a wealthy travelling aunt, and who followed her about the Continent with a persistence that could be attributed to only one cause; not to speak of Will Evelyn, son and heir of Sir William at the Hall, who used to gaze at her all service-time from his curtained pew in church, and hang about her at dances and tennis parties in a state of hopeless fascination. Each of these honestly devoted lovers, and many good fellows besides, would have snapped up Nancy Lawrence promptly had the pretty girl possessed anything of a fortune to match her face; and doubtless she would have been equally happy with any one of them as she was with Jack Primrose now-and felt that no other husband in the world could compare with her husband. But as they were more or less in bonds, and as she had no money, she had been a too expensive luxury to them all. It was only a curate with nothing, like herself, and with the calm assurance of his class, who could dare to rush in

where they had feared to tread; and that is how money, or the want of money, settles the most important of our affairs in life. And that was how the Rev. John Primrose came by the wife that it was the fashion of his brother men to regard as far too good for him.

Nancy herself, with a very proper sense of her own value, never thought herself too good for him. Nor did her family and friends. His people were small squireens, held in much respect in her neighbourhood, and he himself was a clergymanwhich doesn't mean much in this part of the world, but means a good deal to middle-class English girls. There were quite a number of healthy and handsome young ladies who would have accepted him with alacrity had they had the chance, though it was known that he had little or nothing beyond his professional income, and suspected that he would be sickly and die young, leaving a widow and orphans unprovided for; and Nancy felt it a great honour to be chosen before them all. She thought she had married him because she loved him-and she did love him as well as a girl of eighteen, who is necessarily a baby in that respect, knew how; but she had really married him because he had asked to marry her, and because it is proper for a girl to marry when she is grown up

and has a large number of undowered sisters. She and they and the father and mother were all quite satisfied, except that Dr. Lawrence didn't feel quite easy about the bridegroom's health. But he did not believe there was anything radically wrong, and trusted to the Australian climate to correct what little there was. The doctor, though he practised in a country town, weighted with so large a family, was a man of research and enterprise, and knew what a fine field existed at the other end of the world for medical student sons. Nancy was not only to pursue her own advantage in her new sphere, she was to be pioneer for her brothers; and, when Jack's health was restored, she was to come back home, with her account of the great young country, to report whether it was fat or lean, like the men whom Moses commissioned to spy out the land of Canaan.

Looking at her, with his eyes on his prayerbook, and listening with a deaf mind to her husband's mild exposition of a mild text of Scripture from the pulpit over his head, Mr. Mackenzie began to ask himself the inevitable question, "How, I wonder, did she come to marry him?" But, of course, it was impossible for him to guess.

When service was over the leading families showed no hurry to leave the precincts of the

church. Church wardens and vestrymen felt it their duty to exchange a word with the archdeacon upon parish matters, which were very pressing and interesting in these early days of his incumbency; likewise to extend the right hand of fellowship to the new curate, and to give him a sort of semi-official welcome. The wives waited for their husbands, aided and supported them, so that there was quite a crowd of gossips on the footpath between the vestry door and the parsonage garden gate, and several dinners threatening to spoil before they separated. This had happened every Sunday since the Browns' arrival; but Colin Mackenzie, though the leading parishioner of all, had never been one of the lingerers. He did not like a crowd, he did not like gossip; he shunned all church business except that of giving money; and-to the great regret of the archdeacon-refused to undertake any responsibilities in the way of parochial administration. He was a man of peace, he said, and a long experience had shown him that there were no such quarrelsome people as church people when they attempted to work together on behalf of their church. His groom used to slip out before the last "Amen" had died away and put the horses to; and the parsonage ladies would hardly be able to get through the