nearest approach to knightly armour-tea-tray, dish-covers, and anything else that had a ring of metal about it; but when she, as King Arthur, had to address Mrs. Raisins, as Guinevere, in the words, 'Queenliest of women!' her powers of imagination gave away, dishcover and tea-trays collapsed in one peal of laughter, whilst poor Guinevere moaned out

'My dear, if you could just make this apron you've pinned round my head and face a little looser! And what is it I've got to say to you? Is it "Your Royal Highness" or "My dear master "?"

In the same way, it was most difficult to conceive that an Andromeda could ever have been of Mrs. Raisins' build, and yet Angela was quite sure that the role of Perseus would not fit her better.

'It is only so that I may have something to fly to, don't you see?' Angela had said hopefully at first.

Yes, my dearie,' panted that obliging sexagenarian; and I shan't have to be here long, shall I?' for she was bound by two antimacassars to the curtain-hooks against the window. Then Perseus had winged his saving flight; but Andromeda spoilt the whole by crying out, 'Bless me! who'd have thought of your coming, sir!'

After that, what remained but for Mrs. Raisins to be the seamonster, which was not less trying to her, as it involved an all-fours arrangement; and Angela must be Andromeda, content with a Perseus existing in her imagination, but so forcible an imagination was it that once or twice the poor old dragon raised her head from the floor, and looking behind her, exclaimed

'If I didn't think, Miss Angela dear, that you saw somebody really a-coming in at the door!'

But this evening there were no games. Tea was ready in one of a suite of rooms-all Angela's. There was her summer bedroom, and her winter bedroom; the Blue room, where the tea-table was now awaiting her, and which was furnished and decorated à la luxe-'too extravagant even for my dear little miss,' Mrs. Raisins used to say. From its painted walls and Liberty hangings, its pictures and its pottery, opened out another large room, comfortable and plainly furnished, once Angela's nursery, now Mrs. Raisins' workroom. Dolls had never been any satisfaction to Angela since babyhood; living animals, soft warm things that would respond to a caress, were so infinitely superior. It must be a life to satisfy Angela; and to-day she had known for the first time how death can come in and change the face of things; not only that, but it had shown her the character of the survivors in such a painful light, that she was on the point of believing Lance and Touchstone to be the only pets worth cherishing.

Mrs. Raisins watched her solicitously as she pushed away her cup and saucer from her, and after eating one piece of bread-and-butter VOL. 15.

2

PART 85.

with her strawberries, said she wanted no more'; she was going down to Uncle Roger.

She found him where she knew she should find him-in the library, and he was doing what his housekeeper had done before tea -napping. Angela stole in on tiptoe, and creeping down to a footstool beside him, laid her head on his knee. When he awoke at her touch, she said softly

'Don't move, Uncle Roger; let me be here-quite still-for a little while. I think I will mourn thirty days for Guinevere, as the children of Israel used to mourn.'

He stroked the little dark head silently.

'My rabbit-hutches look so different without her,' she said, after a few minutes. 'I don't like things dying; I don't like changes!'

'It is a stern law, my darling, that change is inevitable,' he murmured. I mean, that it must be so; it cannot be otherwise. But you shall have another rabbit in Guinevere's place next week.'

She said not another word. But when he had left her, on dinner being announced, she still sat there; and when she heard the diningroom door safely shut, she laid her head on the arm of the chair and sobbed out

'No other can ever be the same! How can Uncle Roger think so?' For the same reason that he did not see the un-childlike selfcontrol which she exercised all the evening; walking up and down the terrace with him whilst he smoked, pouring out his coffee for him as usual, playing at draughts with him, till nine o'clock sent her upstairs to bed. There Mrs. Raisins came to her, and was asked this question

'What becomes of the souls of dead animals?'

'My dear, they have none!' was the prompt reply.

'I don't believe that, and I never shall!' answered Angela indignantly. I know I would rather meet my rabbit in heaven than that cook of Uncle Roger's, who never would make me a cake for Sunday, and always would go to chapel because the seats were more comfabler than church!'

'Miss Angela dear, that isn't good of you.'

'I can't be good when my Guinevere is dead! How can I?' 'My dear, I wish you'd ask somebody else your questions. God can make us all good if we ask Him.'

And He knows everything, you always say,' replied Angela gravely, with her bright eyes fixed on the old woman's face bent over her; and so He knows how I loved Guinevere, and He won't expect me to be good before my days of mourning are ended, because He knows how hard it is. And now good-night, Mrs. Raisins.'

'Good-night, my precious!' was followed by an explosive puff at the candle and a hasty retreat to the workroom, where Mrs. Raisins was soon afterwards discovered by the housemaid, wiping her eyes, to whom she expressed herself as follows

'If Master goes on with this way of bringing up Miss Angela, with ne'er a playmate but me and her animals, he'll drive the poor child to be that clever, she'll get quite silly! I've heard of such things in my time. Why, hark to her talking to her rabbits and her dog! I can't think where she gets it all from. And you can't think no more than I can, Eliza, so it's no use your casting about for an answer. But I doubt her growing up to be a woman.'

(To be continued.)

'She should never have looked at me, if she meant I should
not love her.'-Browning.

A WEEK had passed since the fête, and Mr. Layton and Agnes Morrison were sitting in the gardens at the Hall, talking over that affair, and many others. Mr. Layton, like many other people, found Miss Morrison very pleasant to talk to; and she for her part just warmed a little, for him, out of the cold friendliness which she showed to most of the world.

Day was supposed to be sitting with them; but at present she was only represented by a heap of tangled knitting at the corner of the seat. At a little distance, in the middle of a small grass-plot just screened from them by a clump of rhododendrons, was a little basin lined with stone, and fed with water by a pipe from the house. Here Dick imagined himself to be about to construct a fountain, and Day, after being once or twice appealed to, had found an irresistible attraction in the work, and was in it heart and soul.

It was not her fault that she was a grown-up young lady.' She could not help it, though the figure that leaned contemplatively by the side of the little basin might have served a painter for a model of slender, half-developed womanhood. She was honestly absorbed in Dick and his work, as if she had been Dick's brother, and even Mr. Layton's conversation seemed less absorbing than the fascinating little tangle of lead and india-rubber tubing, with which her slim fingers were busy.

'Sigh no more, ladies; ladies, sigh no more!

Men were deceivers ever.'

So she sang by snatches, in careless fashion, while Dick came and went, busy and important: and the song was broken by much serious consultation, squabbling, contradiction, and laughter.

Happy young creatures!' said Mr. Layton, with half a sigh, after listening for a moment to the musical ripple. They make one feel very old !'

'Most people never were so young as that,' answered Agnes. She smiled as she spoke, but her smile was sadder than his sigh.

'Nay!' he said. "I think it is only that we forget so soon. Surely

we have all been in Arcadia, each in our day. If it were not for the recollection of that we should not feel so old.'

'Perhaps not! But the time we spend there seems so short, compared with the rest of it.'

That depends upon why and how we leave it,' began Mr. Layton ; and then broke off suddenly as a snatch of song floated across the bushes again—

The craft of men was ever so

Since summer first was leafy.'

Is not that it?' said Agnes Morrison, in low tones that conveyed a hint of more passion than she usually permitted herself to reveal. "The craft of men " in one shape or other, is not that what usually shows us the way out of Arcadia ?'

Nay! surely,' began Mr. Layton with a smile; and then stopped again, as if stung by a sudden recollection. The smile faded from his face, and his lips drew sharply together. For a moment he looked straight before him, with eyes that saw,—not the sunny garden of the present, but the closing gates of Arcadia, closed behind him by a fair, slender hand.

Then he turned to finish his half-uttered speech, and their eyes met. One instant they looked at one another curiously, as if they would have said 'What? You too?' Then Mr. Layton forgot what he had been about to say, and let a long pause follow, which his companion did not care to break. She felt that she had betrayed herself, and to a woman of her character the knowledge should have been painful; but it was not. The most reserved feel at times a pleasure in knowing that they are seen through and understood. Only, there must not be too many words about it.

Then sigh not so, but let them go!'

sang the sweet voice with a laughing ripple in it; and Mr. Layton said within himself Most excellent advice, if one could but follow it. But what is a man's burden in such a case, compared with a woman's? What spirit and strength they have, these gentle, fragile creatures! I wonder if Miss Austen was right when she said that they remember and regret longer than we do?'

Mr. Layton's keen incisive speech was gentler than usual when he spoke again; and as they discussed various trifling matters, he did not trip Miss Morrison up and show her the errors in her judgment, as he was perhaps rather too fond of doing.

They were deep in conversation when a step drew near across the grass, and looking up they saw Maurice Claughton.

He came up to them, but even while he greeted them his eyes were roaming here and there in quest of the third member of their party. There was an unusual silence on the farther side of the rhododendrons, and Agnes would not betray the young people. She kept silence, a