they might come if they liked," whispered Tinie, in comical apology to her elder brother for the unparalleled numbers. But Ninian did not stand aghast, as she expected; he even condescended to put off the slight shyness he generally wore in society, and to be as merry as he always was with his family at home.

"We'll get him to dance-you shall go and ask him," said Tinie to Hope. (Miss Tinie kept floating and flashing hither and thither just like an omnipresent sunbeam.) "There-go up to him-compel him! It's your right, 'you little birthday-girl,' as we used to call one another when we were children."

And when Hope came up with her eyes cast down, in a half-demure, half-playful courtesy, Ninian fairly yielded, and was led off in triumph. They had a most eccentric quadrille, though; for he was, as Tinie observed," a dear old stupid, good-for-nothing donkey ;" and her own partner, Professor Reay, a long-limbed, solemn-browed follower of the sciences, was not much better.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tinie," said Reuben, who, like most younger brothers, was self-constituted censor-in-general. "How can you force the professor to make himself so ridiculous! He that was your father's friend and your brother's teacher, and wore his college. gown when you were in your long-clothes!"

"What a Methuselah he must be! I wonder if he is gray yet. I'll go and see.'

"The age of this fossil formation," Dr. Reay was saying, in his conversation with Ninian, " can not be distinctly ascertained. But"-here he paused to shake his head, as if a fly had settled on his hair-" but probably we should have to go back to the antediluvian period.”

"I think we should," whispered Tinie, behind the professor's chair. She had loved to play him tricks ever since he was a great awkward learned youth-elderly even in boyhood, and she a tiny child on his knee.

"What were you remarking, Miss Christina ?" asked he, turning quickly at the sound of her merry voice, while a comical satisfaction diffused itself over his face. But

the little fairy had disappeared in will-o'-the-wisp fashion, and the poor professor plunged once more into his geological bog.

He was only drawn from thence to be blindfolded, and made the hero of that immortal game-the delight of little children and great ones-from which, too, those solemn folk who have ceased to be either may extract a wholesome moral; for is not life one long game at blind-man'sbuff?

"They are a happy set, are they not ?" said Ninian, coming to Our Sister, who sat apart to guard from any accident Edmund's little plaster treasures, "Undine" and "Dorothea."

"Very happy; it is quite a treat to see them." And that she spoke the truth was evident in her face of cheerful serenity-the serenity of conquered sorrow. We can not-will not believe this in our untried youth, when death itself seems preferable to the thought of a healed wound. But as wound after wound opens, and still life lingers and must linger—for it takes a long time to die of a broken heart-then we learn at last to thank God for the balm that allays its torture, for the slow years that scar over its rankling sore. Little sweetnesses spring up in our path; strong, necessary, wholesome duties come like servants to uphold our staggering feet, and we gird our draperies in such manner that they may fall over and hide the grievous wound; marching on so cheerily and well that some closest friends would hardly believe it was there at all, until we lie before them in our death-clothes. And it is no matter then!

So Lindsay Græme sat and watched "the children " play, sometimes playing with them, especially when Hope Ansted asked her. She seemed better than any one to understand this young girl. And Hope, for some cause or other, appeared on this night to have cast off her usual constraint. If Tinie were the sunshine, she was certainly the clear, pure cloud-land of the family atmosphere; colorless itself, but ready to receive all sympathetic tints, dark or bright.

"There's a head for you to study," said Mr. Græme, aside, to Professor Reay. He pointed out Hope as she sat holding in her arms Ninian's pet cat, whom she was benevolently trying to soothe in recompense for this ter rific invasion of the quiet parlor.

"Conscientiousness, good; range of domestic affections, ditto, especially philoprogenitiveness. Intellectual ɔrgans—"

"Not very remarkable, as I see myself," interrupted Ninian; "yet, I assure you, I find far less trouble in teaching her than Tinie.”

"Ah! a wonderful steady head has Miss Christina; but she makes no use of it," sighed the professor. His keen gray eyes wore a dove-like softness as he followed the motions of the willful girl, who was waltzing with Edmund to a degree that rendered his commendation quite true, though in a different sense to what he meant.

"No fear; she will grow sedate in time," said the loving brother, on whom a word in Tinie's dispraise ever jarred unpleasantly. "I assure you she takes fits of study as deep as if she were going to be a professor in petticoats. She sometimes threatens she will surpass even you a sage philosopher, almost twice her age."

"Aye, twice her age-I know that." And the gaunt professor, with a slight heaving of his broad chest, lounged back again to the study. There he sank up to the ears in a large folio, and was missing for an hour after.

In the midst of the frolic-which after Doctor Reay's secession increased more and more-a message came that Mr. Græme was wanted. Ninian went somewhat reluc tantly, for he was in the midst of a merry game of forfeits, wherein he had forgotten that there was such a thing as business in the world. He started to see in the hall Rachel Armstrong.

66

Well, Mr. Græme, I am here, you see."

"Nay, why did you not come sooner? You know we asked you."

'Yes, yes; but I am so restless, I can not be quiet anywhere; so my evil genius drove me out, though it is a