cloth, with the observation that, "as far as he was concerned, there was room for a dozen besides himself and Mrs. Fallow, and that the more they were the merrier they should be."

Moreover, this proposal was a most sensible one, for however pleasant a tête-à-tête dinner might be to some couples, it is obvious that, as a rule, many persons present would find such an arrangement particularly dull.

Now I beg to state, for the information of intending pic-nic parties, that although no servants were present, the mistress of Manor House had not trusted implicitly to a commissariat to be provided by some thirty persons, each bringing something to make up what should be a pleasant collation. She reckoned there would be plenty of sandwiches, plenty of wine, a glut of cork-screws, whilst knives, bread, milk, and sugar for tea, and half a dozen other little things which everybody forgets, would fail to make a timely appearance. So it was found, that if the servants were not then present, they had been on the bivouac ground; and the gipsies found under oak trees when they arrived, some stray hampers not commonly found under oak trees in country places, and although there were neither label nor other indication as to whose the hampers were, or why provided, the civilized gipsies, with a kindred propensity to their wilder namesakes, fell upon the booty, ransacked the baskets, and found sufficient, with their own stores, to spread out a plenteous banquet-all the more agreeable for not wanting those little side relishes for which a jaunt in the sweet country air had given all the party a delightful appetite.

Do any sentimental young ladies object to this adjective delightful? If they do I maintain that one of the many enjoyments of living in the country is the delightful relish which makes brown bread, new laid eggs, plain roast, and boiled, delicacies all the year round.

After dinner the youngest of the party, as ordained, were to gather sticks, boil water for tea, and then the gang would break up and find their way back to the grounds of Manor House, to enliven by their presence the flagging school amusements.

This programme was rigorously enforced, and as the weather throughout the whole day kept pleasantly fine and warm, the entire episode under the oak trees went off without any of the planned arrangements failing. There was merry repartee between bachelors and maids, as there ever has been since their assembling together has been described. There was the old fashoned fun-very old fashioned !-of the elder and married people teasing the younger, and there was the usual amount of anecdote, of sentiment over nature's beauties, and of the little dragging weariness occasionally felt which leavens all parties alike, whether pic-nic, yachting, card, shooting, or tea-parties-in short, all parties where men and women assemble together to amuse themselves.

But there was another event, besides the planned events, which had taken place!

Although not the youngest present, the choice of the majority somehow imposed on Mr. Vowhampton and Annie Homewood the task of

gathering the dry sticks wanted for a fire. Of course no one had brought dry sticks. There were three boxes of lucifers produced, and if they had not been forthcoming, probably some smokers present would have produced a box of fusees; but as for the sticks, they must be collected, and Harry Vowhampton and Annie Homewood passed through a gate into a neighbouring shave to pick them up.

Was there not some little perversity in this?

It was perfectly natural to go into a wood to find sticks: so natural indeed that not a single person thought such a course out of the way. Nevertheless, running close beside the banquetters, and separating them from a bye country lane, was a hedge dear to every gipsy's true eye-a hedge full of dry sticks, ready to crackle like patent firewood; and as to gather a bundle of dry sticks in a green wood would take up perhaps half an hour, the would-be tea-drinkers commissioned two silent young farmers, who appeared to have nothing to do, as they had nothing to say, to rob the convenient hedge, and the result was in less than five minutes the kettle was hissing under triangular stakes, as full of promise as it was of water.

Annie Homewood meanwhile was sedulously picking up every stray stick she could find in the wood, and I must confess her town gallant was impolite enough not to help her.

He was watching Annie, as charming as she was busy; and indeed had she been picking up sticks against time, she could hardly have shown greater assiduity in her gipsy avocation.

Vowhampton was as busy in thought as his companion was with her fingers. He was making up his mind to ask her a certain momentous question, which as yet he had not fully made up his mind to ask, and which a fluent talker finds as difficult to do as the ploughboy who always stammers over a word of two syllables.

The wood was a very favourable place for making up his mind, but there was one objection in present circumstances-namely, Annie was clever at picking up sticks, and an impatient pic-nic party was waiting for her bundle: so Harry Vowhampton thought there was not quite time enough for him to make up his mind, and to say what he wanted to say.

This little quibble for delay, which lovers, like lawyers, are always making, was suddenly overturned, as Vowhampton, looking over his shoulder out of the wood, saw the blaze from the dry sticks that had been found ready to hand. His excuse therefore was cut away from under him, and the chance was his of winning a pretty girl whom he loved, and believed to be an heiress, whilst a kettle of water was being made to boil.

What reasoning fellows lovers sometimes are! The following were Vowhampton's thoughts:

Certainly half an hour will not be thought too long for us to gather a bundle of sticks, and I need not look spoony-ish if we get back in that time."

"Assuredly not!"

"As yet we have only been ten minutes away, and the people there have found the sticks they wanted, and got their fire."

"This clever girl has already picked up a decent bundle, quite large enough for us to show at the end of half an hour when we return."

"Therefore (and here the lover came to the conclusion of his syllogism) it is plain I have twenty good minutes to say anything to Annie Homewood, and I must say I think twenty minutes are long enough for any man not a born idiot to say three words to a woman."

When he had reached this point in his reasoning, as he stood holding the bundle of sticks, to which the industrious gipsy was adding fresh ones every minute, the lady exclaimed:

"I do think, Mr. Vowhampton, you might help me : take your turn; I am getting hot in the face, and a little colour would not spoil yours." "How industrious you dwellers in the country are! It is charming to see you work. Ha! Ha! If you would only pause to look about you, you would see our sticks are not wanted."

Annie glanced out of the wood, and at once guessing that the hedge had furnished the fuel, she said laughing:

"I shall owe you a gipsy's grudge for not telling me before. Let us go back; there is nothing to keep us now."

"Suppose we won't see that fire, but stay as long as it would have taken me to find the sticks you have already got! No one will want us." 'Ah, but," said Annie, archly, "there is nothing to do or see; but I will stay, if you will stand gracefully as you are, with those sticks in your hand: I've got my sketch book with me."

Vowhampton immediately dropped the stupid sticks: he felt Annie was quizzing him, and that he was rather a ridiculous object; then taking the girl's hand, he drew it through his arm, and vowed he would not let her go; they had done their work. "Let us now," he said, "take an

idle ramble."

And Annie did not make any strong objection, for the taking her hand had been sudden, and it was so natural, when her companion took a step forward, for her to do the same, that she could not have checked herself without rudeness, and thus the first step arm-in-arm was taken.

As she took that step, Harry Vowhampton forgot his debts, difficulties, and many other little anxieties, and made up his mind.

In the next quarter of an hour he would ask the charming girl on his arm to marry him!

And he kept his word. He told her that he had come down to the country hoping for the opportunity which had come: he offered her his name, and told her he had already given her his heart. Could she love him? Would she make him happy? And many more questions he put, and many more assertions he made within the quarter of an hour; and all together jumbled up in meaning, yet clearly understood, made that particular music which creeps into a maiden's shell-like ear, where it lies in pink beauty by the deep waters of her own soul, awaiting the messago