ether good would come of dealings with strangers. A young man, calling
himself Robert Armstrong, underwent a presentation to the family. He
paid the stipulated sum, and was soon enrolled as one of them. He was of
a guardsman's height and a cricketer's suppleness, a drinker of water,
and apparently the victim of a dislike of his species; for he spoke of
the great night-lighted city with a horror that did not seem to be an
estimable point in him, as judged by a pair of damsels for whom the
mysterious metropolis flew with fiery fringes through dark space, in
their dreams.

In other respects, the stranger was well thought of, as being handsome
and sedate. He talked fondly of one friend that he had, an officer in
the army, which was considered pardonably vain. He did not reach to the
ideal of his sex which had been formed by the sisters; but Mrs. Fleming,
trusting to her divination of his sex's character, whispered a mother's
word about him to her husband a little while before her death.

It was her prayer to heaven that she might save a doctor's bill. She
died, without lingering illness, in her own beloved month of June; the
roses of her tending at the open window, and a soft breath floating up
to her from the garden. On the foregoing May-day, she had sat on the
green that fronted the iron gateway, when Dahlia and Rhoda dressed the
children of the village in garlands, and crowned the fairest little one
queen of May: a sight that revived in Mrs. Fleming's recollection the
time of her own eldest and fairest taking homage, shy in her white smock
and light thick curls. The gathering was large, and the day was of
the old nature of May, before tyrannous Eastwinds had captured it and
spoiled its consecration. The mill-stream of the neighbouring mill ran
blue among the broad green pastures; the air smelt of cream-bowls
and wheaten loaves; the firs on the beacon-ridge, far southward, over
Fenhurst and Helm villages, were transported nearer to see the show,
and stood like friends anxious to renew acquaintance. Dahlia and Rhoda
taught the children to perceive how they resembled bent old beggar-men.
The two stone-pines in the miller's grounds were likened by them to Adam
and Eve turning away from the blaze of Paradise; and the saying of
one receptive child, that they had nothing but hair on, made the
illustration undying both to Dahlia and Rhoda.

The magic of the weather brought numerous butterflies afield, and one
fiddler, to whose