iss Leicester," coaxed Rose.

"If I am the cause of their disappointment I will go, but indeed I
should like to join," said Everard.

"As you please" said Isabel, ashamed of being so much out of temper.

"You know you promised, Miss Leicester," interposed Alice, gravely.

"So I did, dear," returned Isabel, going to the piano: and she was quite
repaid, as they all sang very sweetly, and quite correctly.

"Good night," said Everard, when the hymn was ended.

"Forgive me, Miss Leicester if I seemed rude, I did not intend to be."

Isabel was distressed to find how much the children had been neglected;
true they were tolerably proficient in their studies, but in all
religious instruction they were miserably deficient.

Left entirely to the care of Miss Manning, who was a very frivolous,
worldly minded woman, they were led, (tho' perhaps unintentionally) to
regard all religious subjects as dry and tedious, and to be avoided as
much as possible. Isabel determined to try and remedy this evil by the
exercise of patient gentleness, and by striving to make religious
instruction a pleasure and a privilege. No easy task did this appear
considering the dispositions she had to deal with, nor was it without a
struggle that she put aside her own wishes and devoted her Sunday
afternoons to this purpose. She certainly did not meet with much
encouragement at first; again and again did the question recur to her
mind, what good am I doing, why should I deprive myself of so many
pleasant hours for the benefit of these thankless children; but the
selfish thought was conquered, and she persevered. On week days also,
she had morning prayer and read a portion of scripture, then they sung a
hymn, always taking for the week the one they learnt on the Sunday
afternoon. Nor was her perseverance unavailing, for the children became
interested, and requested her to have evening service as they termed it,
which of course Isabel was only too glad to do. After a while their
morning numbers were increased, as Emily and her papa joined them, and
so on until at last without any special arrangement they all assembled
in the school-room every morning as a matter of course.

Isabel was very different from what Mrs. Arlington had expected, so
refined in her manners and tastes, so totally unfitted to combat with
all the mortifications of a governess's career. True, she had expected a
rather superior person, when Mrs. Arnold wrote that Miss Leicester was
t