leaving the green woods behind her, she entered Clanmena to hear the church clock strike half-past four, and thus to discover that she was thirty minutes too late for dinner.

It really is no slight offence for a tradesman's wife to make dinner wait. It is sure to be a great inconvenience to her husband not to be able to keep regular hours; besides which, his wife ought to be at hand while dinner is being served, to be certain that everything is done rightly, and that nothing is wanted.

Lettice's conscience gave her an uncomfortable little prick or two, and she felt a disagreeable certainty that Frank's mother had not only never kept dinner waiting, at least in her son's experience, but had always visited the kitchen for a few minutes before it came up to put finishing touches with her own useful hands and make sure that all was as it should be.

'I wish his mother was quite different from what she is,' thought the young wife as she hurried through the streets. If she was only like my aunt, now, it would be much more fair; and in that case, Frank would probably not have kept a shop at all! She would have had ambition for him, and put him into some higher grade, and I should have been a lady, instead of a tradesman's wife-a real lady such as that gentlemanly fisherman took me for

Then I should not have had to marry a shop, and the only trial of my life would not have been. Ah! if only Frank's mother had been like my aunt!' with which wish on her lips, Lettice entered her own home in High Street, and met her husband on its threshold with his watch in his hand.

RANK TIPPINGTON looked exceedingly annoyed when Lettice tripped up to him. He stood quite silent for a moment, regarding her almost as if he did not know who she was.

'Where have you been all the afternoon?' he then said sternly.

'Why did not you come to meet me?' retorted his wife.

'Why did not I? I did! Did I ever fail you when I promised you anything, Lettice? It's why did not you come to meet me is the question; and why did not you, Lettice?'

'And I did,' she pouted, 'only I was detained.' 'And it was not at Mrs. Donolly's you were detained, then; for after I had tired out with waiting

for you in the Castle grounds till I felt you could not be coming to me at all, or you'd have come long ago, I hurried to the Square and I learned from Mrs. Donolly that you had left hours before. So I hurried home again, hoping I might find you ; and it was just going out I was to look for you, though 'deed I did not know where to go or what to do. It is too bad of you, Lettice; you have frightened me to death. It is quite too bad. And then, in you come just for all the world as if nothing had happened.'

'Well, Frank, it's yourself that can make a fuss about a trifle. And what is it I've done, if you please? It's just half an hour late for dinner I am! I'm sorry enough if that's all, but I could not help it; I was detained.'

'And what was it detained you?'

Lettice had been longing to tell her husband all that had happened, and to amuse him with the narration of her adventures, which, she thought, would be almost as agreeable in the recapitulation as in the occurrence; but now it suddenly occurred to her, just as she was going to begin quite eagerly, that in his present mood he might not take to it kindly, and might consider her interview with a strange gentleman in a river as a poor excuse for not meeting her husband according to their engagement, and for keeping his dinner waiting; so she

suddenly relapsed into her affected manner, and said very superciliously:

'Sure there would be no difficulty about anything if we dined at a more genteel hour. But four o'clock!' and she closed her eyes as if the very idea was almost more than she could bear, and she was seriously thinking of fainting away about it.

'I shan't get my dinner at four o'clock to-day,' cried Frank, more roughly than he had ever before spoken to his pretty Lettice, 'nor at five either if you stand chattering there. Will you take your things off and come down to dinner at all this evening, I wonder? I shall be late for an appointment as it is, and the bit of mutton will be burnt to cinders.'

Lettice ran up-stairs in silence. She felt vexed both with herself and with her husband, and she was also beginning to discover that she was extremely hungry-a fact that she had not been aware of while the amusement and excitement of her walk had lasted.

She threw off her hat and scarf without caring what became of them, and took her seat at the dinner-table very soon after Kitty had put on it a black, greasy, and otherwise distasteful-looking neck of mutton.

'It's too bad; it is, really, Lettice,' Mr. Tippington said as he turned the joint about and cut from it the best pieces he could find for her. 'I never had