thodox parochial ideas, but to him also Mrs. Primrose was Mrs. Primrose, and not to be confounded with the every-day curate's wife. "Of course, of course," he said. "It is only too good of her to think of helping us. I am afraid you'll find the place very hot and uncomfortable, Mrs. Primrose. It has an iron roof, you see, and no ceiling under it; but I must try to find you a shady corner, if I can."

He looked round the room anxiously. The Reverend John looked at his watch.

"I'm afraid I must be running off," said the latter." Do you mind if I leave you, Nancy, dear? You'll be all right with Prendergast.-You'll take care of her, Prendergast, won't you?"

Certainly," replied the superintendent, with fervour. "I'll take every care of her. She will be quite safe with me." As if Nancy were a helpless baby that couldn't run alone.-"Sit down, Mrs. Primrose; don't tire yourself standing."

He placed his own official chair, the only one in the room, which was furnished for ordinary mortals with benches and stools, for her to sit on, and then stood before her like a courtier before a queen to ask her what she would like best to do.

"Mrs. Brown said you had arranged a class for me," said Nancy, drawing a little Spanish fan, on

which was pictured a bull-fight, from her pocket and fanning her sun-flushed face.

"Oh, yes," returned the young man, indifferently; "she did suggest the second girls-Miss Charlotte has been teaching them. But perhaps you would not care for a class of that kind? They are big girls in their teens-some of them are out in service. You would find them rather a handful, I fancy."

"Pray don't give me big girls!" cried Nancy. "Don't give me girls at all; give me boys. I love boys. Let me have some nice little curly-headed scamps, the real bad little boys, you know-the little pickles that you can't manage. I can manage them. Boys always do what I tell them," said Nancy, complacently.

"It seems to me they must be queer boys if they don't," said Mr. Prendergast, with irrepressible feeling; and Nancy laughed, and they became very good friends.

"If you like boys best, boys you shall have," said the superintendent, with an air of determination; and presently, as the bell began to ring and the room to fill with children and teachers, he went round and pulled all the existing arrangements to pieces in order to make that one which Nancy desired.

The second girls were left to

Miss Charlotte, and half a dozen other teachers were summarily transposed; so that, when Mrs. Brown entered, Nancy was comfortably settled in the shadiest corner, seated upon the only chair, and surrounded by a picked dozen of nice little boys, varying from nine to twelve years of age, "doing her duty" with exemplary conscientiousness, and finding considerable enjoyment therein.

Mrs. Brown was accustomed to come into school, as into church, at the very last moment, accompanying her archdeacon-a symbolical procedure-when all was ready and awaiting them. She did so on this occasion, and consequently lost an opportunity that would have been very valuable to her. The bell had ceased, her daughter Grace had seated herself at the small harmonium, the roll was being called, and she sailed to her seat at the head of the first class without noticing that her enemy was present. But, ere she had been seated two minutes, her eagle eye, scanning the whole assembly, lit upon the distractingly pretty little figure of the curate's wife, upon the newly formed class, upon the position of the superintendent's chair-a chair which had never been moved from the rostrum for her accommodation-and she could hardly contain herself. With difficulty she sat until the last name was shouted

and answered to, her nostrils dilating and her bosom heaving with impatience; then she jumped to her feet and marched back to the superintendent's desk.

"You have put Mrs. Primrose in the wrong place, Mr. Prendergast," she said, loudly. "The second girls' class is to be hers."

"I know," said the young man, apologetically; "but Mrs. Primrose preferred boys."

"It's all right, my dear," said the archdeacon, with a soothing motion of the hand; "she likes boys best."

"What has that to do with it?" Mrs. Brown imperiously demanded, forgetting for the moment where she was, in her rage with two such weak and foolish men. "We are not here to pick and choose. We can't have the school upset every time a new teacher comes into it, just because—”

"Silence, children!" thundered the archdeacon, though the children happened to be unusually quiet at the time; "no noise, if you please!" And he opened a little orange-backed hymn-book and held it ostentatiously before him. "It's all right, Maria-Mr. Prendergast has settled it very well.-Ahem! The forty-first-HYMN!"

Grace began to play the tune upon her little instrument, the air was filled with the rustle of

leaves of hymn-books hastily turned over by hundreds of little hands, and there was nothing for Mrs. Brown to do but to accept the situation-to walk back to her class in silent majesty and open her hymn-book too.

Nancy, watching from her corner, had not heard what was said, but she noted the expression on the face of the "old cat," and drew her own conclusions. "I suppose this isn't right either," she said to herself, wrinkling her charming nose. "I know I shall never be able to please her, do what I will."

But Mrs. Brown's mortification at this moment was chiefly due to the cruel circumstance that her own husband, her own archdeacon, had publicly insulted her.

However, she could do nothing to help herself just now, though she fully intended to vindicate her dignity and powers presently, and the business of the school proceeded. The archdeacon, though he usually left it to Mr. Prendergast, gave out the hymn himself, thus covering his retreat from a possibly untimely onslaught. He cleared his throat, and shouted it slowly, verse by verse:

"Nothing, either great or small,

Remains for me to do;
Jesus died, and paid it all,

Long, long ago.