idea of driving twelve miles, or even one, to call upon the wife of a curate with whom he was not directly connected, would not have occurred to him at all but for this discovery. "You must tell us, Mrs. Primrose, when we may be permitted to make amends for our neglect."

"As soon as I am in my own house," said Nancy, drawing her gloves from her pretty white hands. "We have got one preparing for us, and shall be settled in a fortnight. Then I shall be delighted to see you."

"Tell Mackenzie to let us know.-Colin, you ought to have told us before.-Perhaps you'll dispense with formalities, Mrs. Primrose, and let him. drive you over to spend a few days with us? I'm sure the Black Swan at Wooroona is no fit place for you."

"That's what Mrs. Brown says," replied Nancy, with a confidential look, "and I always tell her that it is. So I shall have to stick to it. But it does smell very beery at times, and the walls are certainly too thin. Still, it's liberty, you see."

"I expect you don't get any too much of that, eh?"

Mr. Dennison, a hearty, burly fellow, with a great, bushy beard, glanced at Mrs. Brown with one eye, and virtually winked at Nancy with the

poury

other. Nancy looked at her plate, wrinkled her forehead, and shook her head; but all her speaking countenance was alive with fun.

"But

"Mum's the word," said Mr. Dennison. when you find yourself in need of protection, apply here."

She thanked him, and said she would bear his offer in mind; whereupon Colin reminded her that he was a knight upon the spot-or very nearly upon the spot-not twelve miles off, at any rate; and he put a taste of sucking pig on one side of her plate, and Mr. Dennison a slice of a duck's breast upon the other, while Mrs. Dennison leaned over the teacups to ask her sweetly whether she took sugar and milk.

In short, Nancy was in her element. She removed her hat, which both men rushed to hang upon a peg; and there she sat, crowned with her burnished braids, lovely as a spring flower in her youth and daintiness, and knowing it just as well as anybody could tell her; and her enemies sat in silence all around and glowered at her. They wanted not to look, but she fascinated them, and they could not help it. Her face was like a magnet in the room. Those quick, dancing eyes; that straight, pert little nose, which had half a mind to curl upward; that charming, laughing mouth, with

its delicate white teeth; and the bold but softly curving chin, where so much character expressed itself, focussed all the eyes that found it possible to reach her. The women looked lower, upon a kind of white dress that they had never seen before; but the gaze of the men was fixed on her face alone, which gazed back at them sweetly, without a sign of embarrassment. The two aristocratic hosts seemed to want to shut off this public homage, for each half-turned his back upon the company, like selfish first-comers to the fire on a winter day, and they warmed themselves to their hearts' content.

It may be imagined how the Wooroona ladies. liked it! Never, they said, had they seen such an exhibition of low vulgarity. Mrs. Brown declared that vulgar was the only word for it. And this a curate's wife, too! Her laugh rippled through the humming room, and her companions laughed with her, and nobody but themselves knew what it was all about. She teased them, and twitted them, and made fun of them, as if she had known them all her life, with no sense of the disparities of age and station. The Wooroona ladies, talking to one another-since no one else seemed to care to talk to them-openly expressed their unanimous opinion that Mrs. Primrose was indeed a little minx.

When the long tea-which resembled a ball supper in its solids, if not in its liquids—was over, there was an interval for relaxation and digestion. During this interval Nancy was introduced to the farmers and storekeepers, and in a twinkling won their hearts also by her pretty looks and ways. She prattled to them as to Mr. Dennison, with that frank consciousness of her power to please which made her so certain to do it; and Mrs. Brown, in the capacity of parson's wife, soon found herself nowhere. Then came the speeches. Mrs. Primrose, still under the wing of her two distinguished hosts, sat in a corner, looking as demure as a child, while the archdeacon delivered the usual discourse. Her companions gazed patiently at the floor, and occasionally stifled a yawn on the backs of their hands; but she was wide awake and listening, taking it all in. Every now and then she shot a swift glance at her husband, who was some distance from her; and Mrs. Brown, intercepting them all, concluded that each was a gibe at her Josiah, and was consumed with appropriate resentment. Nancy did not make fun of the archdeacon -she liked him too well; but it was what Mrs. Brown expected of her, and therefore took for granted.

She did, however, make undisguised fun of the

magic lantern, which came after the speeches. It was a very curious magic lantern, with the most wonderful slides that ever were designed by a selftaught artist. They represented a series of scenes from Scripture history, which were described and explained by a serious young man, whose piety was more conspicuous than his learning; and both pictures and comments were so exquisitely funny that Nancy, who had a fine sense of humour, found them more than she could stand. She knew they were intended for edification, and not for amusement-in her sense of amusement-and so struggled hard to regard them seriously; but the effort was beyond her powers. If you must laugh, you must, just as you must cry if you can't help it. And the congenial spirits beside her, responsive to every gleam of her bright eyes and every inflection of her merry voice, in no way aided her to withstand the irresistible impulse. She tittered under her breath, then giggled aloud, then went off into hysterical peals of laughter that no handkerchief could stifle; while Mr. Dennison and Colin hee-hee'd and haw-haw'd in sympathy, shaking the form on which they sat with the force of their suppressed chucklings, and giving vent to terrific explosions from time to time when they found it impossible to contain themselves; in consequence