nd rest yourself). Some people are always well, but I'm
not--it's (sit there beside the window, like a good boy) it's hard to
have poor health and a crotchety husband, but we all have our trials.
Is your father well too? but what's the use of asking, every one's well
but me. Did your aunt get the pot of jam I sent her last Tuesday?
Raspberry is supposed to be good for the throat, but her throat's all
right. Maybe she threw it out: I'm not blaming her if she did. God
knows she can buy jam if she wants it without being beholden to any one
for presents and her husband in the Post Office.--Well, well, well, I'm
real glad to see you--and now, tell me all the news?"

The young man was a little embarrassed by this flood of language and
its multiplicity of direction, but the interval gave him time to
collect himself and get into the atmosphere.--He replied--

"I don't think there is any news to tell, ma'm. Father and mother are
quite well, thank you, and Aunt Jane got the jam all right, but she
didn't eat it, because----"

"I knew she didn't," said Mrs. O'Reilly with pained humility, "we all
have our troubles and jam doesn't matter. Give her my love all the
same, but maybe she doesn't want it either."

"You see," said the young man, "the children got at the jam before she
could, and they cleaned the pot. Aunt Jane was very angry about it."

"Was she now?" said the instantly interested lady. "It's real bad for
a stout person to be angry. Apoplexy or something might ensue and
death would be instantaneous and cemeteries the price they are in
Glasnevin and all: but the children shouldn't have eaten all the jam at
once, it's bad for the stomach that way: still, God is good and maybe
they'll recover."

"They don't seem much the worse for it," said he, laughing; "they said
it was fine jam."

"Well they might," replied his hostess, with suppressed indignation,
"and raspberries eightpence the pound in Grafton Street, and the best
preserving sugar twopence-three-farthings, and coal the way it is.--Ah,
no matter, God is good, and we can't live for ever."

The four seconds of silence which followed was broken by the lover--

"Is Julia Elizabeth in, ma'm?" said he timidly.

"She's not, then," was the reply. "We all have our trials, Mr.
O'Grady, and she's mine. I don't complain, but I don't deserve it, for
a harder working woman never lived, but there you are."

"I'm rather glad she's out," said the youth hastily, "for I wanted t