she bore it bravely enough, did her work But they had not all lived together as well as ever, walked out with her pupils more than two or three months, when up Brixton Hill, and went to week-night Mary Dallas foresaw what was going to service in the evening, where a stranger happen. preached from the text," Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

That William Lambert would not go back by himself. That Clara Barti would not wish to stay behind him. They would She took it as a heavenly message to take Mrs. Lambert with them, and she compensate for the cruel earthly one- a would be left alone. fresh water-spring in the parched wilderness. And she went home and prayed for her parents, that one strong prayer which remains to weakest, farthest, most helpless love, "Take them in thy hand, O my Father, and as thou knowest now, so deal well with them."

So she lived from her twenty-first to her thirty-second year. That period became a date in her life, because William Lambert returned. He had been a slight, pale, rather cubbish-looking youth when she had "seen him off," with a warm grasp of the hand, twelve years before; but it was a stalwart, brown, bearded man who came to the door at ten o'clock one summer night, and, asking hurriedly "if this was not Mrs. Lambert's," caught Mary's hands and kissed her brow before she could answer him.

Oh, those were merry days! It was midsummer holiday, and there was nothing to do but gratify all the good-humoured whims and wishes of the welcome guest. Now a morning spent in the West-end of London, which had never grown too familiar to Mary to seem other than an enchanted fairyland; now a picture-gallery, now a concert, now a long day in the sylvan glades of Richmond or Kew. They all went and they all enjoyed themselves Mary had no special share beyond packing the picnic basket, and keeping the time-table. It was just life struck on the sweet chords of leisure and friendship and competence for William had prospered, and they did not need to reckon the railway fares, or to weary themselves for want of a fly. How good Mary found it! And she never troubled herself to wonder why some other lives were set to that tune from beginning to end. Wisehearted Mary knew that it is better to come to pleasure with a good appetite than to drink its sweet cup till it pall.

William Lambert was to return to America, but not for a year, and after the first wild ecstasies of reunion and rehabilitation, he settled down for the meantime in the home among the grimy villas, only changing it by the hiring of another servant, and airing it by a current of wider and freer social life.

Mary Dallas was human, and she wept in the solitude of her chamber. But she was Christian, too, and heroic, and she dashed the tears away, and confessed her selfishness on her knees before God, and asked for help to be happy in her friends' happiness.

So, walking bravely on in that path of loving duty, it seemed to grow smooth beneath her feet. No maudlin expressions of sentimental self-sacrifice, no sense of injury ever rose from her lips to cloud the lover's sunshine. "If I am not to live in the pearl palace myself," she thought, cheerfully using the imagery of a favourite nursery story, "at least I can be the good fairy who keeps it bright for the knight and the princess."

And there she had her direct reward. All virtues and vices are repaid in their own coin: only some have long credit; but this came in ready money.

William and Clara were more to each other than she could have ever been to either, but neither were less to her than they had ever been. Nay, rather more. There were times and seasons when they had a lover-like preference for dual solitude; but the innocent alacrity with which she left them to themselves made them pleasantly welcome the cheerful readiness with which she always returned to them. Clara was jealously kind and considerate to make her own new happiness rather increase than diminish her adopted sister's, and under this fresh softening influence William's esteem developed into all sorts of affectionate attentions.

When the year of William's English sojourn waned towards its close, practical arrangements came into the love affair. Practical questions are to love what bridges are to a river-they may either add use to beauty, or destroy beauty for ever. Unfortunately, outward influences generally tend to the latter result, and most lovers have to keep their happiness in spite of their surroundings, rather than with their assistance. Happy are those who have one such friend as Mary, ready to discuss the ways and means for a household across the ocean, without any discontented murmur for the vanished hope

of some nearer home, where she could act | maiden-aunt, name-mother, and all the other sweet little perorgatives which single life gathers from married happiness.

told her that she would be the right woman in the right place.

Then followed the wedding, and the last long farewells. Mary was the universal helper and good angel, keeping even Mrs. Lambert up to as high a mark of cheerfulness and complacency as she dared set for that lady's temper-acting as William's right hand and Clara's stronghold. The worst of it was, she was so good, that they missed her almost too sorely when they were out on the Atlantic together. But William A MAN, determined not to break down, where a woman had kept up, and Clara dashed away her tears, knowing that Mary herself would bid her to smile for William's sake.

Oh, blessed are the influences that bind us to our noblest selves.

Naturally enough, the first proposal was, that Mrs. Lambert should accompany her son and his wife to their new home. But against that she resolutely set her face. Life had nothing remaining for her now, she whined, yet at any rate she would lay her bones in her own country. Then would she like to stay in the same house, and keep on the school, receiving from her son (who knew nothing of the unsatisfactory state of Mary's salary for the last ten years) such allowance as would render her independent of change or misfortune? This suggestion she consented to take into consideration, and kept it there until very late in the marriage preparations, when she suddenly informed Mary that, availing herself of such allowance, she should remove herself and her furniture to her native town of Rutland, and share house with one of her early cronies, still residing there. Mary heard her out with bright attention, and assenting to all her repining provisions for her own comfort and enjoyment, only made one proposition that the widow should not name this new scheme to her son until Mary should speak about it again, which she promised to do in a few days. For Mary knew that One of the little orphan scholars let him Clara's sensitive nerves were already too in, and led him (though he knew the way highly wrought under the sense of a break-well enough) to a chamber on the first ing past and a strange future, and that story. William had cares enough without any A cheerful room, although the chamber needless burden from others' whims and necessities, and that both would be morbidly conscious of any inconvenience or suffering that the course of their lives chanced to inflict upon others. They should know nothing about this measure, which threw her out, homeless, to begin life anew, until she had, at least in some measure, settled herself in some remunerative position.

And before a week was over, she herself cheerfully unfolded the plan to William, making as though it was the very best thing that could have happened to all parties, since she had secured the post of matron in a small home for orphan boys. Just what she had often longed for, she said. She had loved all her old pupils very dearly; but then they had their own fathers and mothers to care for them. These she would have all to herself, to train and to care for, in health and in sickness; and then both William and she simultaneously thought of Jemmy, dead so long ago, and tears came into Mary's eyes, and William softly shook her hand, and

Years and years. The scene is changed from the grimy wilderness of villas to a plain country-house, with a simple flowergarden in front, and vegetable beds and orchards behind. There is a hum of young voices coming from what was perhaps once the drawing-room, and numberless little shirts are fluttering from the lines in the drying-ground. There is a brougham before the portico, from which a tall, grave gentleman has just alighted. A doctor.

of hopeless sickness. The carpet was bright, and the looped-back curtains were fresh and spotless, and there was a crowd of cheap little photographs hanging over the mantelpiece, and a work-table beside the snowy couch, that was turned towards the glorious landscape of hill and valley that stretched before the open window.

Its back screened its occupant from the opening of the door, nor did the doctor wait to see her before he announced

-

"Good cheer, Miss Dallas! I have brought you the news of your election."

"God be praised!" said a clear, sweet voice; "only I'm afraid I've got before some poor body that needed it more."

And the doctor drew up his chair to the side of his patient.

Older and thinner, and with the worn look of pain, it was the same peaceful contented face of Mary Dallas that smiled up from the pillows.

"When you are there," he said, "you will soon be ever so much better. You see, they can muster every appliance to lighten each special form of weakness or

pain. And won't you have a stall-full of work at the patients' annual bazaar, and won't you hold a levee of your orphans, juvenile and adult, on every visitor's day!"

The physician had quite an affection for this patient woman, whom he had seen in her active labours in the orphan school, suddenly succumb to a hopeless form of spinal disease in so advanced a stage, that she must have gone through a world of exhausting pain before she made a sign. "Were you right to conceal so much?" he had asked gravely; and she had answered earnestly, "I would not, if I had suspected anything. For I know, giving the first trouble is often giving the least in the end. But I thought it was too easily borne to be anything serious!"

That was the secret of much in Mary's life. The brave spirit did not recognize its own superior powers of endurance, and thought, Surely the troubles I bear so well cannot be so great as those which weigh others down.

ing how pleasant and cheerful she'd always borne her pain, it was strange to see how glad she was to go when it came to the end. It didn't seem anything awsome to her; one would have thought she'd gone that way ten times before, she was that trustful and sure."

"She'll be missed dreadful," responded the other. "She was the only one who ever went in twice to see that old Mrs. Lomas, who certain can't excuse her illtemper by her affliction, for the cross look had grown on her face long before her trouble came. But Miss Dallas always had her chair stopped at her door, and would sit hours with her, till she actually sweetened her up a bit."

"Yes," said Mary's nurse; "and she's wrote on a bit of paper that Mrs. Lomas is to have her canary, and all her books are to go in to the house-library, and I'm to have her clothes, and there's some little ornament or other named as a keepsake for each of those young men and women that came to see her regular — her old Watching her as she lay, the good doc- orphan scholars. If your great rich men tor saw her eyes wander tenderly round left their hundreds of thousands as just the little room that had been the sanctum and as kind as she's left her bits of things, of her middle-age. Mary was one of those the world would be better sorted, I'm women who grow to love chairs and tables thinking. And now I must send to the post. and walls. Besides, that room had memo- She wrote this letter three days ago, directly ries of its own. William and Clara had the doctor told her what she must expect, come there in the only revisit they were and she gave it to me, and told me to send ever likely to give to their native land, and it off, directly it was all over. The young as Clara had proudly introduced her two lady whose grandma I nursed, before I got children, William, standing on the hearth- the berth in this hospital, hadn't a happier rug, had pointed kindly to the rows of lit-face when she gave me her wedding cards tle portraits on the wall, with the quotation, "Thou hast many more children than

she which hath an husband."

You may go in whenever you like," said the doctor to recall the thoughts that he saw were over-busy; "once a change is to be made, the sooner it is over the better."

"Thank you, I daresay I shall go next week," answered Mary Dallas; "and thank you again, sir, and all my other good friends, whose kindness has found me such a happy home for the rest of my days." Alas, it was only a place in the Hospital for Incurables!

done up ready to be posted directly after her marriage. It's addressed to 'Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, Chestnut Place, Brooklyn, New York.' That's the people she always wrote to. There'll be sorrow there, I expect, when they get this."

Good-bye, Mary Dallas, good-bye. They come in and look at you, with that sweetlysurprised smile on your worn face. Old crippled women are carried in on their chairs to see you for the last time, and they sob with the fervour of youth that they cannot be lifted up to kiss your cold cheek over the coffin edge. Some of your orphans come; your kind physician comes. They say to each other that you were a good, true, Christian woman.

Six years after ! How long are six years when they are passed lying on a Good-bye, once more, sweet Mary Dalcouch-just sometimes carried, couch and las, with the wondering smile on your all, to another room or to the garden ter-parted lips. Did you find more than even race!

There is a sound of weeping in the corridor. One little nurse cannot restrain her sobs, as she tells another that

"Miss Dallas went off last night. See

your bright faith expected? And did not the King answer and say unto you, "Inasmuch as ye have done kindness unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me?"

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