room, and availing himself instead of the ready services of Alice's self-possessed and sensible old nurse, Ann Gaythorn. When the leg was set, and Lady Beatrice laid in Alice's own little bed, and made as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, Mr. Gray hastened to comfort the poor little girls; who not being allowed to be with Lady Beatrice, had taken refuge in his study. He told Alice he had ordered the spare room to be got ready for her, as Lady Beatrice must not be moved for some time. Nurse Coleman and Lady Mary were to remain at the hotel, but of course they would spend most of each day with Lady Beatrice; and the under-nurse Emma, who would, Mr. Gray felt an inward conviction, prove more useful and less troublesome than the more dignified Mrs. Coleman, was to come immediately to the Parsonage, to attend on Lady Beatrice, and sleep in her room. Mr. Gray undertook also the painful task of writing to Lord Estcourt, and Lady Mary felt much comforted by his kind and decided manner of arranging things. Alice however, who knew him too well not to understand the slightest variation of his countenance, perceived that he thought the accident more serious than he chose to say; and she went to bed utterly knocked up with the day's excitement; and, for the first time in her life, lay awake several hours, reflecting on the number of events that had happened that week, and considering how strange it was that Lady Beatrice Aylmer, that little girl she wanted so very much to know, and to be friends with, should now be actually established in her own white dimity bed, and likely to occupy her room for some time! "The tear down childhood's cheek that flows, When next the summer breeze comes by, SCOTT. "It's partly Miss Alice's fault then, and I shall always say so!" exclaimed Nurse Coleman, in her loud harsh voice, early the next morning, so near the door of the room Alice was dressing in, that she could not avoid hearing her. "How dare ye say such a fause word o' the puir lammie!" replied Nurse Gaythorn (or " Nanny Nurse,” as she was usually called in the family), startled alike out of her propriety and her English by the unexpected accusation, and coming out with her native broad Scotch, as she always did when her feelings were strongly excited. "An' it's to the master himsel' I'll go, if ye daur to breathe sich a word again! HER fault indeed! that wad na hurt a fly !" "Ye need not fire up so, Mrs. Gaythorn," retorted Nurse Coleman, a little alarmed at the idea of being shown up to Mr. Gray. "I did not mean, of course, that she did it on purpose; but she knows the rocks here better than I do, and she might have warned us they would be slippery after last night's rain; and she might have caught hold of Lady Beatrice's dress somehow, I should think, and have stopped her fall, instead of rolling down upon her, and so." "She might! she might!" interrupted old Nanny, with a low sort of growl. "She might have been as tall and as strong as you are; and then she might have held faster; and not ha' let go o' Leddy Beatrice's hand, (puir bairn,) when she had gotten it!!" and Nanny descended to the regions below, with all haste, to prepare some nice little mess for the invalid. Poor Alice, however, was cut to the heart. Half-an-hour after, when Mr. Gray, beginning to be uneasy at the most unusual circumstance of Alice's being absent from the short prayers, (which he read daily to his household at eight o'clock,) came up to seek for her, he found her sobbing as if her heart would break; and soon drew from her the whole of the conversation she had overheard. It was the first time in Alice's short life that she had ever been unjustly accused, a feeling most difficult even for the advanced Christian to bear with patience; but which yet has a peculiar blessing attached to it. "For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer |