expect you also to set them down to her credit.

A very singular child!' he said to Miles, who, like Dr. Johnson in an analogous case, wished the phenomenon had been impossible.

A very singular child! so observant and impressionable. All eyes and nerves. I assure you I've seen her in one of those paroxysms fling knife, fork, plate, spoon, and tumbler, all over the place!'

'She's a perfect little devil!' exclaimed Reid incontinently. Hereupon all the mother so strongly asserted itself in Mrs. Summers that without any prompting she protested with an earnestness almost tearful.

'Indeed, Mr. Wyndham, she's not a devil.'

Before Miles could express disbelief in this specific charge made against the child, Mr. Summers, whose offence with his son was deep, though dumb, rose solemnly to say a grace, of which the words might have been addressed elsewhere, but the tone was addressed as a

rebuke to Reid. Miss Summers, who had also been offended, but only at the profane mention of the devil, hurried at once from the room, followed by Carrie humming a hymn from the hymnal of the Salvation Army, in which the offensive name occurred. From sheer opposition to her sister she would have embraced the doctrines of the Salvation Army if they had had any; failing them, she took to quoting or singing hymns of that sect on all occasions, to the exasperation of her ritualistic sister.

Mrs. Summers wavered feebly for a moment, meditating a renewed rehabilitation of Effie; and then, thinking better of it, followed her daughters.

Then Mr. Summers asked Miles to go with him over the place; and the three went together for some hours' inspection of everything, from the Dorkings and the hencoops to the patent padlocks on the gates. No doubt, all these things were of an extreme intrinsic interest, but not, perhaps, of that absorbing kind Mr. Sum

VOL. II.

C

mers imagined them to be. He expected, and even exacted, from Miles an interest in the least of them, which he would not himself have felt, or feigned, in any matter, however momentous, which concerned his guest. We have met a good many Mr. Summers in England, who make you look through a microscope at the least of their affairs, and who yet would need a telescope to bring the greatest of yours into view.

Now the exhibition the family had made of themselves had the effect upon Reid of irritating him not only with them, but with Miles for having witnessed it. He was, besides, greatly disappointed with the impression Norah had created, as he imagined that her beauty would have taken the household by storm. He had no idea that beauty, so far from winning forgiveness from his sisters for her lack of fortune, needed it from them for itself. The women

pardoned all except her face.'

Therefore Reid

was out of temper; and Reid crossed in anything was a very different person from Reid when all went well with him. A rough rub erased the surface polish.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MR. SUMMERS MAKES A JOKE.

L'amour-propre est l'amour de soi-même, et de toutes choses pour soi; il rend les hommes idolâtres d'eux-mêmes, et les rendrait les tyrans des autres si la fortune leur en donnait les moyens. Il ne se repose jamais hors de soi, et ne s'arrête dans les sujets étrangers que comme les abeilles sur les fleurs, pour en tirer ce qui lui est propre.-LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

DRESS, the first temporal penalty of the Fall, is, perhaps, also the worst to the sex which occasioned it. It is hardly possible for our sex to conceive the continuous and harassing anxiety, heart-burning, suffering, and slavery imposed by this idol upon its worshippers. Tarpeia herself was hardly more cruelly punished for her love of ornament, than her sex, crushed beneath the weight of their triumphs. Even those who are embarrassed, not by the want, but by the wealth, of choice open to them, are racked at times