pleasant to her, and when he spoke it was with the same thoughtful tenderness with which he ever addressed Thomasina. She liked his paternal manner very much, perhaps a little too well.

The country neighbours, who so often met Miss Windsor in Sir Richard's company, began to include her in their invitations to their garden parties-it was before the days of croquet-and Lady Bertram, partly out of good-nature, more perhaps from the instinct of opposition to her sister-in-law's advice, was very willing to take her. It was an excuse for taking Thomasina, who would not willingly ave gone without her, and the Windsors were gratified that Mary should be admitted into the county society, from which their own position excluded them.

Polly has no false finery about her, and will be just as good a girl at home,' the

mother said, and she was justified in this belief.

In the summer, when Thomasina was twelve years old, a great event occurred in her untravelled life. Her father was going to London on business, and when Mrs. Grey heard of it, she not only proposed that he should occupy a room in her house in Chesterfield Street, but she invited her godchild to accompany him. Thomasina was drawn two ways, by her dislike to her great aunt and her desire to see the great world, but it was easy to divine which would prove the strongest attraction. Aunt Thomasina's manners might be grim, and her authority distasteful, but such considerations could not outweigh her father's delightful schemes for visiting the sights of London. The long journey by train was another motive for leaving home, for railway travelling was still regarded at the Chase as a dangerous inno

vation, and, on the rare occasions when Thomasina's health had required change of air or medical advice, they had travelled in state with Sir Richard's own horses. Thomasina decreed that the invitation must be accepted, and great was the ferment which ensued. While she distracted the minds of the young Windsors by recounting all the anticipated glories of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and the Zoological Gardens, Lady Bertram gave employment to all the workwomen in the house and village, and provided Thomasina with such a trousseau of white frocks as might suffice for a long sea voyage. It was well known, as Lady Bertram remarked, that nothing in town kept clean for half a day, and that good linen was utterly destroyed by the deleterious compounds used by London laundresses.

Sir Richard made heroic efforts to be

pleased with Thomasina's anticipations of enjoyment, and at one moment it seemed to him that the business matters which he had delegated to Anthony might be better transacted in person; but he felt that it would be unhandsome to desert Lady Bertram, and resisted the temptation. The moment of departure arrived; Thomasina had put marks in all her lesson-books, had taken an affectionate leave of Polly, exhorting her to read no more of that play of Berquin's which she and Dora were reading together until her return, had commended her rabbits and pigeons to the special care of the stable-boys, and her little feet were dancing with impatience to be off. The two old people were low-spirited and anxious, and Anthony was bewildered by the conflicting instructions he received as to the care he must take of his own child. Nothing was left to his judgment, and he even acquiesced in his mother's

final order, that he should send an express to Marston Abbas for Mr. Bidwell if Thomasina took any of the infectious disorders which were always prevalent in London. It would be safer to trust to their own medical man, who knew the child's constitution, than to the best London advice. All Thomasina's fund of hypocrisy was needed to make her look mournful when Sir Richard hoped that she would remember how dull he and her granny must be until she came home again, and she was really glad when the family chariot had driven off and she might give her smiles free play.

The railway journey was less adventurous and a little more wearisome than she had expected it to be; but her flagging spirits revived as they approached London, and the drive through the thronged streets seemed to her as delightful as it was dangerous. Mrs. Grey was more urbane and less cri