dress of grey nun's cloth, with a grey felt hat, and red feather, a bunch of red roses at her throat, and grey gloves-looking, however, very little like a nun, but much more like a young lady content to take her lot among the common changes and chances of this mortal life. And as for their faces, both were pretty; and for their figures, both were shapely; and for colour, one had dark brown hair-which was Chris-and one light-which was Cis. And for their eyes, one-which was Chris-had brown eyes, full of light and truth; and the other-which was Cis-had grey eyes, bright and quick; and the features of Christina Branson were larger than those of Cicely Thornton, but both had regular features, and—well, perhaps one of them had too full a mouth, and another too pronounced a chin; and are we not all mortals, and, therefore, imperfect? And was not each of them faultless in the eyes of her lover? And who am I, that I should pick out little specks and faults in the beauty of a very pretty girl?

"Our fate is too cruel," said Chris, with another deep sigh. "Fred says we must wait, if my stepmother continues obstinate, until he can make an income. That means till he is five-and-forty, and I am about the same age. Oh! Gracious! And he a Venerable judge by that time, no doubt."

"But mine is worse," said Cicely. "Because Harry will never be able to marry at all. That poor boy will certainly not succeed in making an income even for himself, unless he turns professional bowler; when I suppose I might set up a ginger-beer stall to help pay the rent. Does the-the Obstruction continue inflexible ?" "My dear, she grows daily more inflexible. Antoinette and Mr. Vandeleur between them have charmed away her old kindly heart : nothing remains."

"Do they show no signs of going away?"

"None whatever, They make the house the headquarters of the Cause. It is no longer a house; it is an Office. Antoinette has introduced women's dress of the future into daily use, and my poor unfortunate stepmother is going to adopt-at her age, dear! Oh!-the divided skirt and a jacket. As for Mr. Vandeleur, he finds, he says, the Syrian costume less unlike Woman's Dress of the Future than any other, and so he has got one, and goes about in it, and calls it the Man's Costume of the Future."

"The Wretch !" Nothing more hearty could be imagined than this ejaculation.

Yesterday, my stepmother told me she wanted to have a little talk-what she called a serious talk. I was reminded of my poor father's express wish, that I should continue in obedience. That is an old story, and I can retaliate, if I like, by saying that my father never thought that his widow would take up such a horrible line. Then she said that she had her plans both for Harry and myself. That, as regards me, the Cause requires my services and my money; that it will be necessary, absolutely necessary, for me to marry some

one attached to the Cause-Mr. Vandeleur, in fact, if he is good enough to offer. And, finally, that her mind was made up, and there was nothing more to be said."

"And you?"

"I lost my temper, and told her that if that was the case, my mind was made up too; but she need not expect any of the money to help the Cause, for I would continue single all my life, rather than let her have it.”

"Poor Fred!" said Cicely. "But it was spirited, my dear. Heigho! Don't you think, Chris, it would be extremely nice if a rich uncle would turn up, as they do in story-books?

Oh! with

what joy would we welcome home an uncle from India with thousands of lakhs of rupees !"

My dear, you can't have thousands of lakhs, because a lakh is a hundred thousand rupees, which is

"At the present rate of exchange, my father says, ruefully, because most of his money is out there, the rupee is only eighteenpence. But my meaning is clear, and I feel-yes, I really do-a boundless power of loving such an uncle; the more rupees he had, the more I should love him. Do you think Harry would be jealous? Oh! the dear man! I would jump into his arms. very, very good it is of parents to scrape and screw for their children! How beautifully those who do not illustrate the necessity for the Fifth Commandment, which becomes, Chris, very difficult of application when such a Will has been made as

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How

But-Cis-really-the Fifth Commandment never even mentions a stepmother."

"Dear me !" Cicely replied. "That is so true. To think that I should have forgotten it! And what a blessing, what a heavenly blessing, it must be for you to remember that!”

They were walking along a road which lay between fields, orchards, gardens, and pretty villas; and was outside a little country town. It was so near the town that there were a good many people walking along the road; it was so much in the country that a few of them wore smock-frocks, and there was an agreeable sense of hay in the air, and sometimes there passed along the road one or more of those happy persons who love the smell of hay so much that they weep and sneeze continually all the summer, and the tears of joy run without ceasing down their cheeks; it was so much in the country that you would see farmhouses standing off the road, and so near the town that every few yards or so you came upon a pretty villa among its own gardens and trees. The evening was quiet, and when there were no carts on the road you could hear the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell, or the cry of a bird, and, if anything was wanting to complete the rural feeling, there were moments when, unless the senses were greatly deceived, pigs and a pigsty seemed readily accessible to their admirers.

The most characteristic distinction about English country towns

is the invariable collection of residences-Villas, Lodges, Cottages, and what not-which stand outside them all, with their pretty and well-ordered gardens. They are the houses of the people who have made money, or have inherited it, or have worked out their time for their pensions and retiring allowances.

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Everybody knows these towns, of which there are hundreds in this fair realm, and it is in one of them that the surprising events of this story took place. If there were time, I would show you all the Society of the place; first, the people who know the county people; then the people who do not, but yet are highly respectable people-Indians and Service people; then the professional people, active and retired, also tolerably respectable, but a long way below the county circles; mixed up with all the unmarried ladies of all ages; then the retired tradesmen; add to these the young men who go away and come back once or twice in the year, that is to say, very nearly all the young men worth considering, for a country town can hardly be said to offer a career; there is, however, a scanty remnant who, by reason of being gifted with money, or stupidity, or unconquerable laziness, or a sweet and placid contentment, or that great unfathomable British Thirstiness which entirely prevents any other business, do remain in their native place and hang around." These, however, are few, and they are not generally happy, and very often fall into the mischief still for idle hands to do. There are a few other young men those who are articled to the law; those who have begun practice on their own account as curates and doctors; as for talk and excitement, why, every little town in England, if you come to consider, is a little world in itself, grows in its own plantation a never-ceasing crop of news, gossip, scandal, stories, whispers, reports, and secrets, quite enough for home consumption, and is, therefore, sufficient unto itself, and though some of the men, conceding somewhat to the times, take in a London morning paper, there is quite enough interest for everybody (without any help from foreign telegrams) in watching the rise, prosperity, and decline of families, the comedies and tragedies of the common daily life, and the things which make the little world of a country town and its suburbs at once noble and mean, glorious and sordid, gentle and simple, sad, glad, sorry, mirthful, stupid, and wise.

The young ladies of these towns, for their part, have not yet begun to go away, though no doubt the time will soon arrive when they, too, will ask each other why they should be any longer mewed up like canaries in a cage, not trusted to go about by themselves, kept in compulsory idleness, and forbidden to leave the place where they were born, even although there are no young men at all to fall in love with them. "Why," they will ask, "should we go on wasting the freshness of our May ?" Then they will form a Grand National Nuptial Association, which shall undertake to provide a continual supply of lovely damsels (from the congested districts)

for those places, wherever they may be, in which there are pining (and eligible) shepherds, so that from whatever quarter of the habitable globe a sigh shall be wafted by telephone from a languishing nymph, tired of her calm, monotonous, native duckpond, there shall be flashed across the stormy ocean in return a telegraphic invitation to come out and receive the blessing of love, even though there be attached the condition of taking a part in the struggle and a share of the burden, so that the play of Adam and Eve, the couple who would have been no less solitary had there been a thousand other Adams and Eves, shall be enacted again and again all over the world, the one man and the one maid, each for each, with a great deal of make-believe sympathy (among the better sort) for other couples. This will be a truly admirable Society, at once charitable, political and social-economical, benevolent, prudent, peace-making, harmonious, and religious. And moreover, it will meet with the most magnificent patronage, with, I make no doubt, the Royal Family, the two Archbishops, and the Ladies' Land League to support it.

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The 66 needs of this town-I designedly use the parochial and pulpit word, because the business is of such importance, and brooks of no delay--were very great, even crying. Bath, I am told, is extraordinarily congested, and at Hastings the cry is said to be most mournful for a tender-hearted man to hear; but at this town it was estimated, by a distinguished member of the Statistical Society, that there was a proportion of thirty-three and one-third girls to one man. As they only counted young ladies, and not young persons"-that is, shop-girls, work-girls, servant-girls, and so forth, who have no business to have either hearts, ambitions, or passions-I do not quite know how they arrived at the fraction. As a matter of fact, there were certainly not more than thirty young ladies, all reckoned, and only one young man. Even the two curates were both married. The one eligible young man left in the place was Harry Branson, and he was already in love with, and engaged to, Cicely Thornton, who, with Chris, Christie, or Christina Branson, helped to make up the thirty young ladies of the place. It must be owned that the thirty did all they could to create a social life, just as if there had been thirty young men as well. They were exigéantes; they would have nothing short of universal surrender of everything to themselves. For their sakes lawns were enlarged and cut up into tennis courts; for them existed the choral society; for them the flowers blossomed, the strawberries ripened, the peaches grew, the sun shone; for them bands and musicians were hired, parties were given, afternoon teas were held; concerts, entertainments, and musical services were performed. It was on their account (because they never gave any money to anything) that lecturers, deputations, charity-sermon preachers, and "organizers" kept away from the place, together with organ-grinders, German bands, Punch and Judy (the fun of which no young lady has ever been able to

appreciate), circus-pitchers, and so forth, who were never tempted by a single copper to venture near this suburb. On the other hand, gipsies came often, and crossed many a pretty palm; and if soothsayers, seers, spiritualists, prophets, and astrologers do not go there, it is because they have not yet found out the burning curiosity of the British demoiselle to know her future. By the united efforts of the thirty girls, too, professors of foreign languages, music, singing, painting, drawing, and other arts, were enabled to make a humble, but sufficient, living in the town. For their amusement and recreation Messrs. Mudie and Smith sent down whole waggon-loads of books, every one in three volumes, and every one published at so costly a price that it must certainly be a miracle of literature, and every one especially written for these young ladies by novelists who ask (and very often get) no other payment for their work than the smiles of bright eyes and the approval of pretty faces. They have also, however, another and a deeper design. It is this. By portraying a fuller and more joyous life than is attainable by modern English girls, they encourage the spirit of discontent which, when duly fostered, trained, and led, works marvels; insomuch that many of the girls in country towns have begun to ask whether the ocean of life is, after all, only rather a pretty duckpond sheltered by trees, and whether there is really nothing else but a church on Sunday, a little music, a little society, a little anxiety about dress, a little make-believe at study, and a little reading of novels. It is not much, is it? And it must make those who enjoy this life ask each other sometimes, how about the curse of labour, and if there is no other experience in the soul's pilgrimage, such as those described in the dear, delightful, wicked story-books, attainable by her who greatly dares.

All these things, with ample sufficiency, and even daintiness, of diet, and for the most part liberality in dress allowance, were given to these girls, and yet-yet-they were not happy. Twenty-eight of them murmured because they had no lovers. The remaining two —strange inconsistency!-because they had. Merely to have a lover satisfies one for the moment only. If the actual lover of the present ceases to be the prospective husband of the future, what sort of a lover is he then? What good is he? As well-even better-have none at all. Such was the hard and lamentable case both of Cicely Thornton and Christina Branson.

As the two girls walked along the twilight road under the fragrant blossoms and the pendent caterpillars of the limes, they observed, standing at a corner where two ways meet, a gentleman who was looking up the road and down the road, as if in uncertainty. He was a man of good height, a handsome man, with a great brown beard, which was all they observed in the twilight. When the girls passed he raised his hat, and asked courteously if they could direct him to Mr. Branson's house.