elf growing older this evening and entering on a new
phase in finding a life to which his own had come--perhaps as a rescue;
but how to make sure that snatching from death was rescue? The moment
of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and
exultation as the moment of finding an idea.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Life is a various mother: now she dons
Her plumes and brilliants, climbs the marble stairs
With head aloft, nor ever turns her eyes
On lackeys who attend her; now she dwells
Grim-clad, up darksome allyes, breathes hot gin,
And screams in pauper riot.

But to these
She came a frugal matron, neat and deft,
With cheerful morning thoughts and quick device
To find the much in little.

Mrs. Meyrick's house was not noisy: the front parlor looked on the
river, and the back on gardens, so that though she was reading aloud to
her daughters, the window could be left open to freshen the air of the
small double room where a lamp and two candles were burning. The
candles were on a table apart for Kate, who was drawing illustrations
for a publisher; the lamp was not only for the reader but for Amy and
Mab, who were embroidering satin cushions for "the great world."

Outside, the house looked very narrow and shabby, the bright light
through the holland blind showing the heavy old-fashioned window-frame;
but it is pleasant to know that many such grim-walled slices of space
in our foggy London have been and still are the homes of a culture the
more spotlessly free from vulgarity, because poverty has rendered
everything like display an impersonal question, and all the grand shows
of the world simply a spectacle which rouses petty rivalry or vain
effort after possession.

The Meyricks' was a home of that kind: and they all clung to this
particular house in a row because its interior was filled with objects
always in the same places, which, for the mother held memories of her
marriage time, and for the young ones seemed as necessary and
uncriticised a part of their world as the stars of the Great Bear seen
from the back windows. Mrs. Meyrick had borne much stint of other
matters that she might be able to keep some engravings specially
cherished by her husband; and the narrow spaces of wall held a world
history in scenes and heads which the children had early learned by
heart. The chairs and tables were also old friends preferred to new.
But in these two littl