rod.

"No rod!" said he to the laughing children. "Oh, I should like to learn
here very much, if there is no rod. Miss Margaret, do you not find it
very pleasant learning here?"

The children were shouting, "Miss Young, Miss Young, do let uncle Philip
come and learn with us. He says he will be a very good boy,--won't you,
uncle Philip? Miss Young, when may uncle Philip come and learn his
lessons?"

Margaret saw that there was constraint in the smile with which Maria
answered the children. Little as she knew, it struck her that in his
fun with the children, Mr Enderby was relying quite sufficiently on the
philosophy he had professed to admire in Miss Young. Mr Enderby drew a
chair to the window round which the ladies were sitting, and took up the
volume Margaret had just laid down.

"Go, go, children!" said he; "run away to your gardens! I cannot spare
you any more play to-day."

"Oh, but uncle, we want to ask you a question."

"Well, ask it."

"But it is a secret. You must come into the corner with Fanny, and
Mary, and me."

For peace and quiet he went into the corner with them, and they
whispered into each ear a question, how many burnt almonds and
gingerbread-buttons, and how much barley-sugar, two shillings and
threepence halfpenny would buy? The cowslips were now ready to make tea
of, and the feast on the dolls' dishes might be served any day. Mr
Enderby promised to inquire at the confectioner's, and not to tell
anybody else; and at last the children were got rid of.

"Now that we have done with mysteries," said he, as he resumed his seat
by the window, "that is, with children's mysteries that we can see to
the bottom of, let us look a little into the poet's mysteries. What
were you reading? Show me, and I will be your reader. Who or what is
this Heavenly Beauty? We have not done with mysteries yet, I see."

"I was wondering," said Margaret smiling, "whether you take up Spenser
because you are tired of mysteries. In such a case, some other poet
might suit you better."

"What other?"

"Some one less allegorical, at least."

"I do not know that," said Hester. "The most cunning allegory that ever
was devised is plain and easy in comparison with the simplest true
story,--fully told: and a man is a poet in proportion as he fully tells
a simple true story."

"A story of the mind, you mean," said Mr Enderby, "not of the mere
events of life?"

"Of the mind, of course, I mean. Without th