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sentiment lip-deep-it had all the freshness of young sensation in it.

Sometimes they talked of Allan.

"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good indeed to my grandmother-he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is not tired. She talks him to death!"

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"Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady does tire you sometimes."

"O no, I did not mean that-its very different-I am used to all her ways, and I can humour her, and please her, and I ought to do it, for she is the only friend I ever had in the world."

The new friends did not conclude their walk till it was late, and Rosamund began to be ap prehensive about the old lady, who had been all ÷ this time alone.

On their return to the cottage, they found that Margaret had been somewhat impatientold ladies, good old ladies, will be so at times -age is timorous and suspicious of danger, where no danger is.

Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for she kept very good hours-indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundryjother particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than might well beseem a creature of this.

So the new friends parted for that night— Elinor having made Margaret promise to give Rosamund leave to come and see her the next day.

CHAPTER VII.

MISS CLARE, we may be sure, made her brother very happy, when she told him of the engagement she had made for the morrow, and how delighted she had been with his handsome friend.

Allan, I believe, got little sleep that night. I know not, whether joy be not a more troublesome bed-fellow than grief-hope keeps a body very wakeful, I know.

Elinor Clare was the best good creature—the least selfish human being I ever knew-always at work for other people's good, planning other people's happiness-continually forgetful to consult for her own personal gratifications, except indirectly, in the welfare of another-while her parents lived, the most attentive of daughterssince they died, the kindest of sisters-I never knew but one like her.

It happens that I have some of this young lady's letters in my possession-I shall present my reader with one of them. It was written a

short time after the death of her mother, and addressed to a cousin, a dear friend of Elinor's, who was then on the point of being married to Mr. Beaumont, of Staffordshire, and had invited Elinor to assist at her nuptials. I will transcribe it with minute fidelity.

Elinor Clare to Maria Leslie.

Widford, July the -, 17-.

HEALTH, Innocence, and Beauty, shall be thy bridemaids, my sweet cousin. I have no heart to undertake the office. Alas! what have I to do in the house of feasting?

Maria! I fear lest my griefs should prove obtrusive. Yet bear with me a little-I have récovered already a share of my former spirits.

I fear more for Allan than myself. The loss of two such parents, with so short an interval, bears very heavy on him. The boy hangs about me from morning till night. He is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor pale cheeks-you know the sweetness of his smile, Maria.

To-day, after dinner, when he took his glass

VOL. I.

of wine in his hand, he burst into tears, and would not, or could not then, tell me the reason-afterwards he told me he had been used to drink Mamma's health after dinner, and that came in his head and made him cry." I feel the claims the boy has upon me-I perceive that I am living to some end—and the thought supports me.

Already I have attained to a state of complacent feelings-my mother's lessons were not thrown away upon her Elinor.

In the visions of last night her spirit seemed to stand at my bed-side-a light, as of noon day, shone upon the room-she opened my curtains-she smiled upon me with the same placid smile as in her life-time. I felt no fear.

"Eli

nor," she said, " for my sake take care of young Allan," and I awoke with calm feelings.

Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something like this?I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread-I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from me.

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