for their teacher-the affection which you and I, Squire, have for Plato.”

"A new construction," said Willie.

"It is a pity we cannot find employment," said Mrs. Silchester, "for the girls who are left without husbands. I divide those who have quite passed the boundary of Marriageland into two classes-old maids and maiden ladies. The distinction is not mine. I had it from a lady of this shire who belongs to neither class."

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"It is well put," quoth Willie. "You see the old maid. She is selfish, stingy, fussy, gossipy, fond of no company but her cat. The notion old is always connected with her, though many very old women look young: the notion maid is connected with her rather in the sense of service than in that of virginity."

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Why, Willie, you grow eloquent," said the Squire. "Go on to your maiden lady."

"She," said Willie, "has perchance lost in war or wreck or by disease the only man she

could have married. She remembers him always: the grief of the first memory has turned to a happier recollection, and, as the years pass, strengthens the anticipation of meeting him again. Meanwhile, according to her state of life, she does what is wise and right. She feels no humiliation in being alone, while her sisters are grandmothers and her nieces mothers. She knows that though most marriages are made on earth, there are marriages which will be made in heaven."

"Faith, Willie," said the Squire, "you are in your best humour to-night, eloquent and poetical. My wife is parson and you're clerk. You will have to tip us a stave before we let you go back to your old castle."

Musical Willie complied, and burst out into a few stanzas to the famous old tune of A Hundred Years Hence.

Right well to be married

Is woman's best lot;

Her fortune is arid

When wooers come not.

Yet still may she gladden

Her kith and her kin

If her heart does not sadden

For what she can't win.

Send old maids to Hades

On any pretence;

We'll love maiden ladies

A hundred years hence.

The Queen Aphrodite

Was married, you know ;

Alas, she was flighty,
And rather so-so !
But Athena sedately

Her lesson-books read,
Having risen quite stately

From Zeus-pater's head.

Of old maids one afraid is,
They scandal dispense,
But we'll love maiden ladies
A hundred years hence.

If an old maid you visit,
She offers you tea
Which her grocer explicit
Describes as bohea.

Should she venture to injure

Her scruples with wine, 'Twill be made of the ginger Or cowslip divine.

A stingy old maid is

Afraid of her pence :

Not so maiden ladies

A hundred years hence.

The cream from their dairy's

As white as the snow;
In their thin china ware is

True orange pekoe;
And who ever grumbled

When glass of quaint shape
Holds Sercial that's tumbled
Three times round the Cape?
A dreary old maid is

A nuisance immense;
But we'll love maiden ladies
A hundred years hence.

The old maid talks slander,
And picks people's brains,

And loves to meander

Through filthiest lanes.

Our dear maiden lady

Flies far from such strife

To where Shakespeare makes shady

The forest of life.

Send old maids to Hades

On any pretence;

We'll love maiden ladies

A hundred years hence.

This was the last song that night.

CHAPTER V.

SILCHESTER.

"As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms

Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight ;
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound.”

ILCHESTER is a village of curious charac

SILCH

ter. In the days when first it was granted to Ranulf de Silchester (vide Domesday Book), it was moor and morass for the most part. The lords of the manor through many generations thought more of fighting than of improving their lands; but they evidently settled into quiet at an early date, since the Squire's house