_was_ over with the case--Kala died.

"She was beautiful," said mamma, "she was quite different from the
antiques, for they are so damaged. A beauty ought to be perfect, and
Kala was a perfect beauty."

Alfred wept, and mamma wept, and both of them wore mourning. The black
dress suited mamma very well, and she wore mourning the longest.
Moreover, she had to experience another grief in seeing Alfred marry
again--marry Sophy, who had no appearance at all.

"He's gone to the very extreme," cried mamma-in-law; "he has gone from
the most beautiful to the ugliest, and he has forgotten his first
wife. Men have no endurance. My husband was of a different stamp, and
he died before me."

"Pygmalion received his Galatea," said Alfred: "yes, that's what they
said in the wedding song. I had once really fallen in love with the
beautiful statue, which awoke to life in my arms; but the kindred soul
which Heaven sends down to us, the angel who can feel and sympathise
with and elevate us, I have not found and won till now. You came,
Sophy, not in the glory of outward beauty, though you are fair, fairer
than is needful. The chief thing remains the chief. You came to teach
the sculptor that his work is but clay and dust, only an outward form
in a fabric that passes away, and that we must seek the essence, the
internal spirit. Poor Kala! ours was but wayfarers' life. Yonder,
where we shall know each other by sympathy, we shall be half
strangers."

"That was not lovingly spoken," said Sophy, "not spoken like a
Christian. Yonder, where there is no giving in marriage, but where, as
you say, souls attract each other by sympathy; there where everything
beautiful develops itself and is elevated, her soul may acquire such
completeness that it may sound more harmoniously than mine; and you
will then once more utter the first raptured exclamation of your love,
Beautiful--most beautiful!"

IN THE DUCK-YARD.

A duck arrived from Portugal. Some said she came from Spain, but
that's all the same. At any rate she was called the Portuguese, and
laid eggs, and was killed and cooked, and that was _her_ career. But
the ducklings which crept forth from her eggs were afterwards also
called Portuguese, and there is something in that. Now, of the whole
family there was only one left in the duck-yard, a yard to which the
chickens had access likewise, and where the cock strutted about in a
very aggressive manner.

"He annoys me with his loud crow