the head of Mr. Jubber;
and was about to return straight to the rectory, when he heard a
breathless voice behind him, calling:--"Stop, sir! oh, do please stop
for one minute!"

He turned round. A buxom woman in a tawdry and tattered gown was running
towards him as fast as her natural impediments to quick progression
would permit.

"Please, sir," she cried--"Please, sir, wasn't you the gentleman that
was taken queer at seeing our little Foundling? I was peeping through
the red curtain, sir, just at the time."

Instead of answering the question, Valentine instantly began to
rhapsodize about the child's face.

"Oh, sir! if you know anything about her," interposed the woman, "for
God's sake don't scruple to tell it to me! I'm only Mrs. Peckover,
sir, the wife of Jemmy Peckover, the clown, that you saw in the circus
to-night. But I took and nursed the little thing by her poor mother's
own wish; and ever since that time--"

"My dear, good soul," said Mr. Blyth, "I know nothing of the poor
little creature. I only wish from the bottom of my heart that I could do
something to help her and make her happy. If Lavvie and I had had such
an angel of a child as that," continued Valentine, clasping his hands
together fervently, "deaf and dumb as she is, we should have thanked God
for her every day of our lives!"

Mrs. Peckover was apparently not much used to hear such sentiments as
these from strangers. She stared up at Mr. Blyth with two big tears
rolling over her plump cheeks.

"Mrs. Peckover! Hullo there, Peck! where are you?" roared a stern voice
from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown's wife
seemed about to speak again.

Mrs. Peckover started, curtsied, and, without uttering another word,
went back even faster than she had come out. Valentine looked after her
intently, but made no attempt to follow: he was thinking too much of
the child to think of that. When he moved again, it was to return to the
rectory.

He penetrated at once into the library, where Doctor Joyce was spelling
over the "Rubbleford Mercury," while Mrs. Joyce sat opposite to him,
knitting a fancy jacket for her youngest but one. He was hardly inside
the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the
subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love
with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as a
gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male
human beings, in all t