new to Fanny Robins to hear blue skies and poets talked of instead of the bad doings and lost souls of servants; happy shadows, and graceful lines, instead of puddings and bonnets; and to find a joyful, inconsequent pantheism taking the place of hard words about a state of grace and future burning.

Fanny Robins would have been just the ally Kitty needed, but for one thing. She had no brains. Kitty would drop hints plain enough to lodge upon an intellect no broader than the blade of a sixpenny knife; they slipped off Fanny's as if it had been greased. Kitty would try plain, unvarnished truths with no better success.

For instance, she said one day, "You say that you love me, Fanny, and would like to make me happy. You can easily do that. You are an only child, and your parents are well off. Persuade them to let me live with you as your governess, companion, and friend. What more should I want than to be always with my darling?"

And the next week, Fanny came looking utterly miserable. In a moment her childish story was sobbed out. "I asked mamma, and mamma said I was a little fool; and, O Kitty! I can't live without you."

All this Kitty heard very grimly, and though she accepted poor little Fanny's gewgaws, she took less trouble about her for the future. She even forgot to kiss her sometimes, when Fanny would go home and write sad little stanzas with the help of a rhyming dictionary. Seeing that two promising fish had slipped away from the bait, Kitty threw out more line, and watched patiently for a third, which proved to be Laura. Whilst Laura hovered round the hook, now coming near enough for a nibble, now plunging a yard or two back, things went on right merrily among Kitty's people. Mr Perugino Neeve (thus named by his father, himself an artist, by way of happy presage), not prevailing upon Kitty to marry, spent his money instead. He did not pay his debts.

"Having waited so long, the people can wait a little longer," he said; "and by George, it's hard for a fellow to work hard for fifty pounds, and spend it upon butchers' and bakers' bills;

if I owed that money for works of art it would be quite another matter."

Accordingly, he put off the butcher and baker with fair words, and laid out his money upon a very beautiful old carved oak cabinet for his studio, a new dress for Kitty, and such items as gloves, whisky, and Sunday suppers to the ladies. Perry congratulated himself a great deal more upon the spending of his money than the earning of it. With him to spend a five-pound note, no matter how, was an achievement, and when it was spent he set himself soberly to earn some more, borrowing in the meantime where he could.

Kitty tried again and again to make him economical, sometimes using rather strong words.

"You're such a goose," she would say, "that I can't respect you, Perry; try ever so much, I can't respect you. Only the other day you had the opportunity of clearing yourself, and becoming respectable. What did you do? Whilst those horrid people kept dunning you, and your pockets were full of money, you must choose to buy cabinets and ivory carvings, which will neither feed us nor clothe us."

"You lecture me just like a wife, Kitty," said poor Perry, humbly; "and if you were my wife I should mind you,-I should really."

"I don't believe a word of it; but if people could be married as servants are hired,-for a month upon trial,-we might make the experiment."

'Kitty, that's being too hard upon me."

"I should not be hard upon you unless I were fond of you, and wished to see you all that you might be," Kitty answered, soothingly. "Dear boy, do listen to reason. Save a five-pound note, only one, and you will find saving money quite easy after that. You are the person in the world who cares most for me, and what can your caring for me avail whilst you are penniless?"

This speech was like a kindly pat on the shoulder, accompanied by a sharp blow on the cheek. Perry did not know how to take it.

"Don't be mercenary," he said.

"I am not mercenary; I only want you to do the best you can for yourself. People must either go backwards or forwards in life; and if you love me, you must go forward. I wish to be proud of my husband."

Perry was in raptures.

"There never was a girl like you, Kitty; and I only wish I were an A.R.A., so that you could be proud of me."

"Well. Many an A.R.A. has had a humbler beginning than you, I'll be bound; but Rome was not built in a day, and I expect no impossibilities from you, to begin with."

"I think I shall be quite rich in a year's time," Perry said, very seriously, "and you will see that I have reckoned upon nothing improbable; I have got, as you know, orders for two pictures, one for twenty-five, another for forty pounds; that makes sixty-five. I shall paint these pictures so well that I'm morally sure to have orders for companion subjects.” Kitty pulled him up sharply.

"Why are you sure?" she said.

"Why? well I'm just as sure as I am of getting my dinner to-morrow."

"There is no moral certainty about that," Kitty added; "but go on."

And Perry went on.

"Twice sixty-five pounds make a hundred and thirty, and that, you know, will be gained in little more than two months' time; what I can do in June and July, I can do in August and September; what I can do in August and September, I can do in October and November".

"That's enough by way of illustration," Kitty interposed; don't go on for ever, like Sancho Panza counting the sheep." "Reckon it which way you please, my income for the next twelve months can be neither more nor less than seven hundred and eighty pounds a year."

Seven hundred and eighty pounds a year! The very thought of this so elated Perry, that he took the liberty of kissing Miss Silver. Kitty resented this, and resented the speech that had occasioned it.

Cornford to be terribly short of money, and she had, moreover, saddled herself with three orphan nieces of late, so that common humanity forbade any appeal in that quarter; and as Mrs Cornford was considered a sort of millionaire in the little circle, it may be imagined Kitty looked far and wide for help, and despaired of it. There was one particular friend of hers, an old Polish refugee, named Petroffsky, who was a teacher of languages, and earned about fifty pounds a year. Kitty thought of him. Papa Peter, as she called him, is always giving me cakes and sweetstuff: she reflected what harm would there be in telling him that she would rather have a yard or two of ribbon once a year than all the cakes in the world? Accordingly, the next time she went to take tea with Papa Peter, and mend his stockings for him whilst he played the flute, she said, "Papa Peter, you are not to give me any more gingerbread-nuts or sugar-plums, under pain of my everlasting displeasure."

"Now, you do ask me a thing impossible," Papa Peter said, blushing and looking more disconcerted than the occasion should seem to warrant; "not to give my beautiful Catherine gâteaux and bonbons! va l'en, mauvais enfant ;" and that very moment he took out of his pocket a packet of cakes, and put it into her own. Kitty said, after a little while,

"I will tell you what you shall give me, Papa Peter-every year a little something or other to wear only a yard of pink ribbon to tie up my hair is more useful than a ton-weight of toffee, much as I like it, you know." And Kitty coaxed and cajoled him, and let out, little by little, the terrible state of her wardrobe. It set Petroffsky thinking. This handsome young girl was the only being left to love and to love him in the world, and all her gowns and shoes were worn out. It was hard that he should do nothing for her when she mended his clothes so nicely, and was so fond of hearing him play the flute ! And she did not care for the sweetmeats which he had earned by giving lessons in French to the pastrycook's little daughter over the way! He felt greatly mortified, but he was a Pole, and had a soul above despair; so when Kitty was

gone, he thought the matter over for half an hour, and came to a conclusion. He saw no reason why French lessons should not be exchanged for millinery, as they had hitherto been exchanged for cakes. Accordingly he wrote out the following advertisement, and carried it that same evening to the Chelsea Halfpenny Times :

"To MILLINERS.-A distinguished foreign professor will give lessons in French and German in exchange for a bonnet and mantle. Address-Professeur, care of Mrs Chumps, greengrocer, Middle Row, Chelsea."

And as luck would have it, a milliner's apprentice at Hammersmith, fired with the desire of parlezvousing and obtaining a situation in Paris, answered Papa Peter's advertisement. A very satisfactory arrangement was entered upon, by which Miss Sarah Ann Sykes agreed to furnish a fashionable bonnet in return for ten lessons; but the girl was dull, and poor Petroffsky repented him of his bargain.

How many repetitions of "Quelle heure est-il ?" "Que faitesvous?" "Où allez-vous?" and such phrases had to be given before the strings of the bonnet could fairly be said to be earned; and then there were Perrier's first two fables and the verb être to roll up and down like Sisyphus' stone, to pay for the flowers and lace. Whenever a lesson came to an end, Petroffsky would say, "Et mon chapeau, mademoiselle, ça doit être bien beau, n'est-ce pas ? My bonnet, mees, is he fine, is he achieved?" bowing her out with a grand air.

The little girl was honest, but hard, and when the ten lessons came to an end, she declared that she had bargained ill for herself. She expected to have understood French as well as her instructor by the end of the tenth lesson, and she wrangled and haggled till the old Pole consented to give her five additional lessons. And the verb être and Perrier's first two fables were rolled up-hill and down-hill for five weary hours more, as Miss Sykes said, "to find the cap and drops." Petroffsky no more knew what the cap and drops meant than if she had spoken Welsh; but when the bonnet came at last,