very well imagine, she thought of very little else all day.

She tried to amuse herself with her doll and her books, but every time she heard a carriage coming down the street she felt a sort of pain and sickness in her heart, for she thought, "If I had not been so naughty, that might have been my Aunt's carriage coming for me."

After dinner Nurse dressed Helen in her Sunday frock and her best pelisse and bonnet, and when she had made her quite ready, she said:

66

Now, Miss Helen, stand in the window and look out, and in a little time you shall see what you shall see."

Helen stood in the window because she was told to do so, and she did not know what excuse to give for not liking to look out, but you may be sure she did not like it. The carriages rolled down the street, but none stopped at Helen's door. Three o'clock struck, and four, and five, and then Nurse undressed Helen, and said there was no use in waiting any longer, but it certainly was the strangest thing she had ever known; and so Nurse went on saying during the other two days while she and Helen were left alone together. On the

fourth day Helen's mamma, and papa, and Stephen, and the rest of the party came back; they were all very merry and full of the pleasant visit they had had, and they expected to find Helen just as happy and with as many pleasant things to talk about. They were very much surprised and disappointed when they found that she had stayed at home all the time, and had never been to Swanland at all.

As soon as the bustle of the arrival was over, Helen told the whole truth to her papa and mamına, and she showed that she was so very sorry, and she had suffered so much, that they were kind enough not to be angry with her; but the next day, when Helen came into her papa's study to sit and read, he took her on his knee and had a longer and graver talk with her than he had ever had before. First he made her understand all about secrets, and made her see how very wrong and dishonest it is to try in any way to find out what another person does not wish you to know; and then he said another thing to her, which Helen did not quite understand then, but which stayed in her mind and came back to her when she grew older.

"Let this disappointment teach you, Helen," he said, "to wait patiently for your good things; people who try to snatch at pleasant things and

wonderful things, as you tried to snatch at the secret, will find very often that they catch disappointments instead; but wait patiently, do not hope and plan for yourself, and better things than you have ever hoped for will come."

SWANLAND.

ABOUT Six weeks after that time Helen did go to Swanland. I must tell you all about it, for I think you were a little when sorry you heard what a great pleasure she had lost by behaving so foolishly about the secret. It was nearly six weeks after her papa and mamma came from the sea-side; Stephen and the elder children had gone back to school; the house had been very quiet, and Helen had gone on, for what seemed a long time to her, learning her six words of spelling every day, and walking in the streets with nurse and the baby; reading storybooks in the afternoon, and repeating her hymns to papa and mamma in the drawing-room, while baby was being put to bed. At last, one hot August evening, when the window was open, and Helen was standing on papa's knee looking down the street to see if the lamplighter was coming, mamma said to her, quite suddenly, "Helen, I have got some good news for you; you have been such a quiet wise girl for the last six weeks, that

papa and I think you deserve a reward, and we have asked your aunt to send the carriage tomorrow to take you to spend a few days with Cousin Mary at Swanland."

It was well that papa's arm was round Helen while her mamma said this, for it made her feel so giddy and trembling with joy, that if he had not held her fast she would have tumbled down.

“Oh, papa-oh, mamma-are you quite sure?" she said; and I believe she would have asked the same question twenty times over before she had heard the answer often enough, if just then Nurse Bream had not come in to take her away to bed.

Nurse Bream knew that Helen was to go to Swanland, for she had packed up all Helen's clothes in a little black trunk that morning while Helen had been saying her spelling-lesson in the study; but though she knew it before, she looked quite surprised when Helen told her, and allowed Helen to talk about it all the time she was being made ready for bed; only, as she folded the clothes round her when she had settled her in her little bed, she said

"Well, Miss Helen, I hope you will like Swanland as well as you think you shall when you get