them for the purpose; for I had discovered yet one more escape from Mrs. Bradley in rude and childish attempts at drawing; and, clumsily as I did it, I knew that I improved every time I took the pencil in my hand to copy such few common pictures as I could find in books. Moreover, Mrs. Haggart's shilling was expended in two or three lead-pencils; a box of extremely hard and chalky watercolours, selected for their capacity of rubbing off against a wet knuckle; and a fluffy brush, which required much sucking to render it effective.

CHAPTER IV.

MY FIRST COMPANION.

My bedroom was at the very top of the house, and formed one corner of a vast attic extending over the whole of the upper story; the partition which inclosed my bed being formed of a dilapidated clothes-horse, hung with faded curtains. The place had once been a weaver's workshop; there were two black gaps in the ceiling, where the machinery had required additional height; the walls were lime-whitened, and decorated here and there with fanciful caricatures drawn in charcoal; it was lighted by a leaded casement at each end. This was, after all, the most cheerful and lightsome part of the house, though it was vast and unfurnished; through the front window nothing could be seen but a long and sink-like parapet, into which one or two sickly trees moulted off sooty leaves, and became more stunted every year they failed to grow; the back commanded an extensive range of red tiles, their expanse relieved by odd mountainous peaks, with chimney-stacks standing like crumbling battlements; while here and there lay a small lake of "skylight," foul, broken, and cat-haunted. There was only one sign of cheerful life to be seen there, in the daily work of a weaver who lived in an opposite house, and kept birds hanging in cages on the sunny side of his garret-window. On summer mornings I have stood upon my bed, and watched the swift motion of his shuttle as the sunlight shone upon it through the open window. I have wondered to hear him sing, while the rattle of the loom clicked out an accompaniment, and the canary with the loudest voice strove his utmost to drown the sounds of both.

I had not yet learnt that the greatest of all God's earthly gifts is the work that lies nearest to every man's hand, in the doing of which he shall aid the redemption of the world.

About a month after the receipt of my guardian's letter I had gone home from school on a half-holiday, my thoughts full of two new dresses which I knew were being finished, and to which I had contributed some of the plain sewing. Running up-stairs to take off my bonnet, and put on a bib-apron which Mrs. Bradley insisted on my wearing as a sort of penance for having outgrown my pinafores, I heard somebody talking in the attic, in a tone which, as it was mingled with a sort of monotonous chant and the scuffling of a pair of feet, occasioned me some surprise. I knew Mrs. Bradley was down-stairs with the young person, and hesitated a moment before pressing the latch of the door, for I felt my heart beating violently, and some stray thoughts of the witches I had read of in an old magazine occurred to me with all the force they could attain in broad daylight. The shuffling stopped, however, and I heard unmistakeable sounds of shaking a bed, while the voice accompanied the exercise with

"Charming Judy Callaghan,
Don't say na-a-a-a-y."

The last syllable being prolonged, and, at the same time, smothered, as though the singer had suddenly retired for the night with her head under the blankets.

I was not a little startled to see another bedstead, of the kind usually known as "stump," occupying the end of the room furthest from my own, and, while I wondered where the voice had come from, to discover a pair of worn and clumsy boots performing a wild dance in the air, the legs and body belonging to them being concealed beneath the old patchwork coverlet, whence they presently emerged as I shut the door.

A pale and slatternly girl, with a tangled mass of hair half-covering a pair of twinkling brown eyes, rolled on to the floor, and, after scrambling up again, stood looking at me as though I had been an apparition.

"Why, what do you want here?" I asked, looking first at the windows and then at the loft-door, with a vague apprehension that she had come in by one or the other.

"Me! Oh, I'm the new servant-of-all-work, I am-come this mornin'. A shillin' a week I'm to have; and that's better than the House, any way; an' so I don't care."

"Do you mean to say that Mrs. Bradley's going to keep you to do the house-work?"

"Yes, I'm to clean up to-morrow-to begin with these boards; so if you sleep in that other bed you'd better git up early. I say, she's a strict sort, aint she?" "Who do you mean ?"

"Why, missis. No perkisits, I should say. I've been down in the cellar, though, an' aint there a precious lot o' bones down there? She don't sell 'em herself, do she ?"

"Sell them ?"

"Yes, sell 'em. Oh, you know a lot, you do! I say, do you like puddin'?” "Yes, sometimes. Why?"

66 Well, I mean to have two-penn'orth o' Saturday. There's a prime shop round in the Tenter-ground, an' if there aint four penn'orth o' bones I'm blest. Which do you like best, baked plum an' meat gravy, or biled spotted ?"

"I don't know what you mean; we have baked batter pudding here."

"Stickjaw, aint it ?-never mind, it's fillin'. I say, if I go out to-night, I'll bring you home a tater from my mother's can; she sets at the corner of Spifflefields market, she do, an' the tater salesmen knows her, so she's got reg'lar gooduns. But you won't split, will yer?"

"Split what?"

"Why, about the bones."

Here Mrs. Bradley's voice, coming up the well, and calling, "Come, you 'Maria, don't go idling now," stopped our colloquy, and the new servant-of-all-work concluded her confidences by a double shuffle which carried her to the door, through which she vanished.

I sat down on my bed, and scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry at the strange companionship. One thing was evident, that I should no longer be subject to those wretched afternoon cleanings against which I had so often revolted; but yet I felt that I was considered of no more real importance in Mrs. Bradley's

personal calculations than the poor girl who had been hired to take my place. At all events, my guardian's letter was decisive, and I would wait his arrival with what patience I could, in the hope that I might yet claim some real interest at his hands. In this frame I descended to the parlour where the "young person" was still sitting amidst the slate-coloured sea.

"Oh, you've come down, have you?" said Mrs. Bradley. "Now just you mark my words: if you get too thick with the gal you saw up-stairs you'll know a piece of my mind. You're a fine lady, I dare say, in your own esteem, to have a servant to wait on you; but let me tell you she's to do my work, and you'll just help yourself. So, if you don't like to clean your own shoes, and make your own bed, and wash up the tea-things, you'll go with 'em dirty and hard, for I aint a-goin' to keep a dog an' bark myself. She's come from the Union, so she knows what it is to want, and precious glad her mother was to get her here."

“Very kind of you to take her," murmured the young person; "'specially as you'll be sure to make her a good servant, if she's willing."

Mrs. Bradley acknowledged this tribute with a grim smile, and, continuing to talk at, rather than to, me, said—

"Yes; an' there's others, Miss Playson, as might have learnt a plenty if they'd been grateful for their mercies, and not have thought themselves too good; but 'pride cometh before a fall,' as they'd know if they read the Scriptures; and there's them that comes out of the Union to learn, and there's them that goes into the Union to learn, for all their fine dresses an' their airs. Now just go and make the kettle boil, for soil your hands you shall.”

With which, Mrs. Bradley having wrought herself up into a virtuous state of mind, Miss Playson, meanwhile, shaking her head solemnly, as one who knows but too well how bad human nature is, I went into the kitchen and began to blow the fire.

The poor slatternly girl, brought from a workhouse to an apprenticeship of servitude, became, after all, a companion in that dreary time, when real sympathy had never reached me, isolated child as I became. Although she was now confined to such a contemplation of life as could be obtained by stealth during the numberless missions she was expected to execute amongst the cheap shops of the neighbourhood, her former experiences had been such as to leave her a vast amount of knowledge which was entirely new to me.

The poor creature had within her a heart full of kindness and good-nature, which found a faint and difficult expression, but was yet a great solace to me in my friendlessness; especially as Mrs. Bradley had now no scruples about leaving the house in our joint charge night after night, while she, with her husband, paid off long arrears of tea-meetings and other visits. Marvellous were the stories which I either read or recounted from the store of books, now nearly exhausted, in the pantry window box; which, by the way, having become sealed to me again since Maria's arrival, I had emptied of such volumes as yet remained untouched to conceal them behind the chimney-board in our bedroom-a conspiracy which, as we both shared it, gave the reading a certain additional flavour, although I adhered to my determination of never neglecting a lesson for the sake of it.

Looking back, I fear I can remember that I gave myself some airs of superiority, which expressed much of gratified vanity, on these occasions; for, as Maria sat with her round, brown eyes staring at me from the opposite side of the fireplace, she would look upon me with a sort of wonder as I unfolded some terrible legend,

which she felt called upon to believe the more unhesitatingly as it exceeded others in horrible detail. I could discern that she associated me somehow with the book, and looked upon me as in some way the author of the story. I became strongly bound up with her most cherished attachments, at all events, and could often hear her sniff defiantly, and mutter in a meaning but mysterious manner during some of Mrs. Bradley's outbursts of temper. For herself, she had known little else than buffeting of one sort or another, first from her drunken father, who left his wife to earn the family bread by selling onions or sheep's trotters outside tavern-doors; and, again, when these failed, from workhouse menials, who, as she said, "took it out of her precious."

Left only to this strange companionship, I grew up with a curious notion of

equality-not that I ever supposed the poor, dirty, slipshod maid to be my natural playfellow; but she possessed, as I have said, experiences of which I knew nothing; was versed in all the dread hardships and mean shifts of poverty, having for its sphere the streets, its constant occupation the endeavour to obtain a day's food and a night's shelter. Honour to the poor, deserted, ignorant girl, that the vices of which she must have known something too found no place in her recitals, and were never conveyed to me in any terms but such as left no distinct impression. I can even now remember that she avoided many of these topics, when there was any danger of approaching them, by staring at me suddenly, and, turning the conversation, saying

"But there, I aint a-goin' to tell you any of the bad things I see afore I went into the House. You jest be thankful you aint got to take no notice of 'em."

ALTHOUGH falconry had been extensively followed, and carried to great perfection, not only in England but in many parts of Europe, from the twelfth century (when it was the favourite amusement, not only of kings and nobles, but also of women of high degree) down to the time of which we are now speaking, yet, as hawking is, in the popular mind, intimately associated with the days of James I., we have accordingly reserved our accounts of this pastime for that date.

How general this amusement was in olden times may be gathered from the fact that for several ages no person of rank was ever represented without the hawk upon his wrist-the bird being an indisputable criterion of station and dignity. In travelling, in visiting, in affairs of business or of pleasure, the hawk (no inappropriate emblem of nobility in the feudal ages) still remained perched upon the hand which it stamped with distinction.

To part with the hawk, even under circumstances of the utmost extremity, was deemed highly ignominious. In the book of St. Alban's the sorts of birds assigned to the different ranks of persons are placed in the following order :

The eagle, the vulture, and the merloun for an emperor; the ger-falcon and the tercel of the ger-falcon for a king; the falcon gentle and the tercel gentle for a prince; the falcon of the rock for a duke; the falcon peregrine for an earl; the