SOME of the long lines have gone from father's face, and he looks happier now. His face seemed to change the very minute Winifred was better. When she recovered, he began to recover too. He is so good, kind, and indulgent to us all.

Father spoke a good deal to me about my sad birthday after Winny was better. I had told him how I had refused to go into the last field with my little sister; and though, he said, the bull might have frightened her just as much if I had been with her, and she might have fallen into the water all the same, yet still, I might, if on the spot, have been able to prevent the accident.

He said he would not blame me for what had happened, he would only wish it to be a warning to me in future, and he thanked God, very fervently, that no worse harm had resulted from the accident, and that the great trouble which had seemed to threaten us had been turned into a great joy.

"But," he asked, "do you remember promising me that very day, Bunchy, to take care of your little sister?" "Yes," I answered, "and I broke my promise. Oh,

father, I did not mean to be unkind. I had no idea that any harm could come of my refusing to go with Winny."

"No one could have imagined, Bunchy, that a bull would get into that field," father said, "or that your little sister ran any danger when you told her to go without you; but it is not the consequences of our faults with which we have to do, so much as the faults themselves. Selfishness has always been a great fault of yours, Bunchy. Your dear mother used to grieve very much about it, and wish that you would not always try to follow your own inclination. Is it not true, my child, that your own pleasure has generally been your very first care?"

"Yes, father," I answered, crying bitterly as I spoke ; "and I promised mother, on my birthday last year, that I would be better, and I wasn't."

"You have been better, Bunchy, much better since your dear mother left us," father said; "and I see no reason why you should not conquer this fault altogether, if you now try earnestly to do so. I like to see you in good spirits-I should like you always to be happy, but not thoughtless."

"I don't feel as if I should ever be wild or thoughtless, or in good spirits, even, again, father," I said. “I am too unhappy now."

He kissed me, and said that I must not be unhappy; then he added, "You are my eldest child, you know, to whom I look to be my very greatest comfort."

And as I gazed into father's dear, kind face, that had lost so much of its gladness since mother died, I determined to strive in real earnest to be good and prove

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indeed a comfort to him, and I said, "I promise you, dear father, to try very hard never, never to be selfish again!"

How really thoughtless it was of me to have been selfish at all on my birthday, and only two months after mother's death! I could not help wondering at myself.

"One thing more, dear Bunchy," father said, “I should like to say to you, and that is, always make a point of thinking before you act. Your dear mother used to say, when she was quite young, 'I pray, I think, then I speak or act, and so avoid making mistakes.'"

"How many good things," I thought, "mother said and did when she was young, and, indeed, all her life!" Some people seem so much better than othersnaturally, I mean-without having to take the trouble to make themselves good. I wonder why this is.

I asked Mr. Holt this question, one day when we went to tea at the Rectory, and he was telling us about a dear, little child in the Sunday School, who was the stay and comfort of his old grandparents with whom he lived, and for whose support he worked, when he was not at school; and he said that people were differently constituted, morally and physically-I remembered those two long words—and that some, even as children, were certainly much more drawn, than others, towards God and spiritual things, but that God knew all our temperaments, temptations and trials, and that every one of us must try to resist our own special temptations to wrong-doing, and pray often for help to be good, and that if we strove in real earnest, praying whilst we strove, by God's grace, to conquer our faults, the very temptations we resisted would

help to form, and transform, our characters, and make them exactly what God would have, and intended, them to be.

I will try to think," I answered, in reply to what my father had said, "but all the thinking in the world won't make me like mother."

Father sighed, and I could see tears sparkling in his eyes as he walked away, saying that he believed I should soon grow more thoughtful.

"WHAT a good thing it was," Winny said, when she was well enough to be told all that my dog had done for her, "that God sent Neptune to fetch me and Ida out of the brook! Wasn't he a clever dog?"

"Yes," I answered; "Nep has always been clever and good. But Duke was good and brave that day too. He helped Nep chase the bull; and if Neptune had not fetched you out of the brook, he was going to do so. But I don't think that Nep was better than any other Newfoundland dog would have been; Bob does not think so, either."

"How kind of Duke!" Winny said. "He would have been a big boy if he had fetched me out-almost bigger than Bob. But you are kind too, Bunchy," she added, as she climbed on to my knee, and kissed me. "Why are you so kind to me now? is it because mother's dead?" I did not answer my little sister.

"Is it?" she asked again.

"It is because mother told me to be kind," I said, "and also because I love you; but I am trying to be very kind to you, to please mother."