"Yes, she is alive now, and if you like I can tell you her name. She is called-listen, Helen, and Mary, and Emma-she is called by many people whom I know 'Miss Miminy Piminy."

There was a smile on Miss Anne Stainton's face as she spoke; but I don't think any one else smiled. I think all the other eyes in the room had tears in them-I am sure Helen's had.

One thing was quite certain-that was the very last time that the name Miss Miminy Piminy was spoken in Miss Stainton's house. Marianna Pamela Neale never heard it again.

"But

66

you

did not call her all that, did you?"

No; after a time she let us call her as her father called her-May. It suited her quite well, and I dare say none of us who went to Miss Stainton's school ever see a branch of pure white hawthorn now without thinking of her."

THE TWO BRIGHT PENNIES.

THERE was one thing that Aunt Helen was very particular about; I will tell you what that was. She liked the little boys to whom she told so many stories in the evening to be very industrious and attentive when she taught them their lessons in the morning. "No multiplication table, no story," she used to say, and the little boys, Francis and Hugh, looked grave; for they did not like the multiplication table any better than Aunt Helen had done when she was a little girl and went to Miss Stainton's school.

At ten o'clock every morning Aunt Helen came into the little schoolroom, and she expected to find Francis and Hugh-each seated on his own stool, with his lesson-books open before him, and ready to say his morning lesson without missing a word. She was always sorry when they were not ready-when Hugh said,

"Please, Aunt Helen, will you give me my

multiplication card back again for one minute; I forgot to look at seven times nine."

Or when Francis said, "What shall I do, Aunt Helen? I forgot to feed my guinea-pig when I was in the garden, and if you do not let me go out again for five minutes to give him his breakfast, he will be hungry all the morning."

"You are careless boys," Aunt Helen used to answer when they said such things. "If I forgot my morning's work as you do yours, and had to run in and out of the room as you wish to do, the lessons would not be finished till dinner time. Hugh may look at his tables again, and Francis may go out to feed his guinea-pig this once; but you must be doubly careful all the rest of the lesson hours, for I have generally found that you do not say your lessons so well when you are interrupted in the beginning of the morning."

What Aunt Helen said was quite true; Francis and Hugh did not generally say their lessons well when anything happened at first to take off their attention; but one day they said them very well, in spite of a great temptation they had to think of other things, and that is the day I am going to tell you a story about. It was a fine frosty January morning; the sun shone into the schoolroom; the fire burned