Her own family, of course, must first attach her attention, but after that there will be much time left to do a kindly office and speak an encouraging word to a sick wife or repentant sister in her husband's parish. There are many cases at which a man cannot get; and here a woman in the village is worth more than a treasure. Her fellow women will tell her more, and even things that they would not tell at all to a man; and, as a woman, she will be able to relieve a woman, and perhaps prevent a family from going wrong, or by a word spoken in season save one who is willing to be saved. And now, in conclusion, I must say a few words to the Parsons themselves. Some will be surely saying to me, "Marriage is a lottery." "Where are we to get wives such as you describe ?" I know that worthy old Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, used to say of marriage "that it was like putting one's hand in search of an eel into a bag which contained fifty snakes for one eel." I always had an idea that he must have been jilted forty-nine times, and caught his eel at the fiftieth cast. Things don't always turn out as we expected them to, and even in a matter of a wife we may be taken in; but I really do think that the Parsons have the advantage of other people, in that their acquaintance is unusually large; and they do say that young ladies never shun a Parson, even if he is not very good looking.

At all events, look about before you choose; there are plenty who will make good Parsons' wives, and be glad to become such, doing their duty well in their chosen stations; and that duty is not a light one. To the honour of many of our English ladies be it said, there are many, who as Parsons' wives, and who as single women, do it, calling down the admiration of their countrymen and countrywomen, and, what is far above all mortal praise, laying up for themselves a crown of glory in the immortality hereafter.

A November Night.

Loud howls the storm, the wild winds shriek and rave,

And scare us on our beds!

On what devoted heads

This night shall close the all-devouring wave

How fares it out at sea?

Of those who now in ships upon the deep

Are tossing to and fro,

What mourners soon may know

Their dear ones suddenly laid down to sleep
By Death, GOD's messenger?

"O'er wayward children would'st thou hold firm rule,
And sun thee in the light of happy faces;

Love, hope, and patience, these must be thy graces-
And in thine own heart let them first keep school."

Soon after Mr. Stratton went away, the Shirleys left home for a few weeks, and Miss May, also. Life at Northcourt was at its quietest, and might very truthfully have been called dull. Lucy had gone back to Teesdale again. Margaret did feel a yearning for change of scene come over her, and specially on the morning when she and her charges exchanged "Good-byes" with the joyous party who were leaving the Rectory for a month at the sea-side. But no murmur escaped her in writing home, and scarcely a word on the subject reached the ears of the children. The absence of the Shirleys was of course deplored by them. Oliver solaced himself with his carpentering. He was very ingenious, and he had completed a rabbit-hutch, with divisions and arrangements of his own designing very cleverly. When Margaret and his sisters went to see it one morning, Fanny exclaimed at the beauty of a couple of black rabbits which it contained, and asked Oliver where he got them. He

coloured up, and laughed, but did not reply. Fanny and Maude begged him to tell them. He persisted in refusing, and his sisters asked him why he would not say.

"Because I don't choose," he answered.

"Then you are very absurd and ill-natured, I think," said Maude. "And you are very inquisitive and ridiculous," replied Oliver. "But where is your white doe?" asked Fanny.

"I've got no white doe now, and that's all I'm going to tell you about it, so don't go on bothering any more."

66 Oh, you have exchanged it for those black ones! I did so love that doe, Oliver; I wish you had kept her. I would have bought her of you."

"Would you? Yes. I dare say, and have given me less than half her value, most likely."

66

How crossly you are speaking, my dear Oliver," said Maude. "You should not tease, then. You had better go on after Miss Stourton. I shan't come to-day."

The two girls walked on, and joined Margaret, who had not heard the conversation that had just passed. She enquired why Oliver was not with them.

Maude told her he said he should not come.

Oh, but I wished him to go with us this afternoon; run back, Fanny dear, and tell him."

Fanny ran back as she was desired, but Oliver was nowhere to be seen; she called, but he did not answer; so she returned to Margaret, and told her she could not find him, and that he was not at the carpenter's shop.

They looked for him for a little while, but thinking he might have gone about some fishing-tackle to the keeper's, they went that way to the village. However they did not find him, or see anything of him till they were sitting down to tea, when he came in, looking flushed, and appearing very absent.

66

My dear Oliver," said Margaret, "where have you been all this afternoon? This is the second time, lately, that you have not come in till we have begun tea. I wanted you to go to Burton's with me.” Oh, did you? I quite forgot about it. I'll go to-morrow. I know what to say to him. Give me some bread, Maude."

"Don't forget to say please, dear."

"I want butter, too, please," said Oliver.

Margaret put some on his plate. It was evident to her that he wished to avoid saying where he had been, so she would not then press her enquiry. After tea he laid himself down on the floor, and took a volume of the "Arabian Nights" to read. He looked very tired.

Margaret called Fanny to help her with a little frame, fastened with pegs, which she could not manage to put properly together; it seemed that the pegs were too large.

"I must cut them, I think," she said, "but I have only my penknife."

"Oliver has a great strong knife," said Fanny.

"Will you lend me your knife, Oliver ?" asked Margaret.

"I-I-I've not got it here," he replied. "I dare say Charles has one; shall I go and ask him ?"

"Oh no, never mind now; I will use the thick end of the blade of my penknife. I hope, though, you have not lost your knife." "No, it's not lost," he said; and again buried himself in his book.

His manner rather surprised Margaret, but she did not say anything, as Maude came to ask her some questions about her German exercise. The following morning, when Oliver was alone with her, she enquired why he had not said where he had been.

"Maude and Fanny always bother so," he answered.

"Maude and Fanny always bother so!" she repeated: "I don't understand you, Oliver. I don't like that way of speaking of your sisters. I cannot imagine any reason why you should not reply pleasantly when you are asked where you have been."

After a moment's hesitation, he muttered, "Mamma does not always ask me where I've been."

66 Then you do not mean to tell me?"

No answer.

"I must not let you go out alone unless I know where you go, or unless you can give me some sort of reason for not telling me who you are with, or what you do."

To her great surprise he burst into a fit of crying, and said he wished he was at school; that Margaret wanted to make a baby of of him, and he hated being made to do everything just like his sisters. She tried to reason with him, but it was useless, so she told him to go up to his own room, and to remain there. He rushed away, and she heard him running to his own room, the door of which he shut with such violence that it seemed to shake all the others in the house. She was astounded; troublesome he had now and then been, and self-willed, but an outbreak like this she had never for a moment expected. She decided to leave him alone for the present, and she sat thinking over the whole affair, and came to the conclusion that something or other must be burdening his mind or conscience, or he could never have been irritated and put out to so totally unreasonable a degree by what she had said to him, and she thought the idea about being treated like a baby must have been put into his head, for she never heard him breathe such a thought before. When dinner was ready she went up to his room, and told him to come down with her. She went down stairs, and he followed her. During dinner he did not speak, and Maude and Fanny had the good sense to respect his red eyes. As soon as his sisters had left the room, however, he said, "May I go to the carpenter's shop?" "No, Oliver, I wish you to come to Bruton's about your boot." You had better take your English poetry now, and learn it in the library while your sisters are with me."

He said nothing, and she went up to the school-room; he came up too, and got the book, and took it down into the library, as she had desired him. No sooner was he there, though, than, putting on his cap, he got out of the window, which was close to the ground, ran round the house, and jumping over the palings, ran across the park as fast as his legs could carry him; then through a copse, down a little green lane to a cottage, at the door of which he was met by a lad of about fourteen years old. He was so out of breath he could

scarcely speak. But after a few gasps he said,

"I can't come. It's such a bother! They will ask where I've been. I say, I wish you'd let me tell; may'nt I tell Miss Stourton ? "Tell Miss Stourton? no, of course not; why you ain't such a baby, to be sure. You promised you would not, remember that."

"I know I did, but I thought you'd let me, after all. I can't stay, or I shall be fonnd out. I just ran out to tell you that I cannot come."

"But what am I to say to Peterson? He was to be at my uncle's at three o'clock, and I told him you would be there. I've not got money enough to pay him."

"That's all I've got," said Oliver, giving him sevenpence. very sorry but I really must go."

"I say, mind your promise, then."

"I'm

Oliver had run several yards towards home before the last words had been shouted by his companion, and he reached the window, and got back into the library unseen and unheard, he thought; but he had not been quite as fortunate in this particular as he imagined; for it so happened that Margaret had looked out of the window of a little lumber-room at the top of the house, to which she had gone in search of an old shawl, which she intended to take to a poor woman in the village that afternoon. What was her dismay to see Oliver, whom she believed to be in the library, running across the park from a distance. She was so excessively surprised that she seemed unable to move from the spot where she stood, even when he was hidden by the trees, had gained the house, and ceased to be in sight. She remained some minutes deep in thought, then slowly went down stairs, pausing once or twice, as though wishing to be quite sure of having taken sufficient time for deciding what she ought to do. Then she opened the library door, and Oliver started up from the sofa on which he had been sitting, as if she had detected him in some crime. He looked at her. She went up to him, and quietly taking him by the arm she led him towards a chair on which she sat down.

"Oliver," she said, "when your Mamma left England, she asked me to come here to be with you, and your sisters; she wished me to teach you what was right, and to take care of you, and keep you out of harm. She wished you to obey me, and to pay atttention to my wishes. She left you in my charge, and you know, Oliver, that it will grieve her very much if I have to tell her you have been diso