e done something imprudent in the
damp. I never know what to do. I can't bear him to be a coddle; yet
he is always catching cold if I let him alone. The question is,
whether it is worse for him to run risks, or to be thinking of himself.'

'He need not be doing that,' said Richard; 'he may be thinking of your
wishes and papa's.'

'Very pretty of him and you, Ritchie; but he is not three parts of a
boy or man who thinks of his womankind's wishes when there is anything
spirited before him.'

'Well, I suppose one may do one's duty without being three parts of a
boy,' said Richard, gravely.

'I know it is true that some of the most saintly characters have been
the more spiritual because their animal frame was less vigorous; but
still it does not content me.'

'No, the higher the power, the better, of course, should the service
be. I was only putting you in mind that there is compensation. But I
must be off. I am sorry I cannot wait for papa. Let me know what is
the matter to-morrow, and how Aubrey is.'

Richard went; and the sisters took up their employments--Ethel writing
to the New Zealand sister-in-law her history of the wedding, Mary
copying parts of a New Zealand letter for her brother, the lieutenant
in command of a gun-boat on the Chinese coast. Those letters, whether
from Norman May or his wife, were very delightful, they were so full of
a cheerful tone of trustful exertion and resolution, though there had
been perhaps more than the natural amount of disappointments. Norman's
powers were not thought of the description calculated for regular
mission work, and some of the chief aspirations of the young couple had
had to be relinquished at the voice of authority without a trial. They
had received the charge of persons as much in need of them as
unreclaimed savages, but to whom there was less apparent glory in
ministering. A widespread district of very colonial colonists, and the
charge of a college for their uncultivated sons, was quite as
troublesome as the most ardent self-devotion could desire; and the
hardships and disagreeables, though severe, made no figure in
history--nay, it required ingenuity to gather their existence from
Meta's bright letters, although, from Mrs. Arnott's accounts, it was
clear that the wife took a quadruple share. Mrs. Rivers had been heard
to say that Norman need not have gone so far, and sacrificed so much,
to obtain an under-bred English congregation; and even the Doct