hest ends, having no patience for the results of friction.) That
father in God who bade the young men to be pure and the maidens brave,
greatly disturbed a member of his congregation, who thought that the
great preacher had made a slip of the tongue.

"That the girls should have purity, and the boys courage, is what you
would say, good father?"

"Nature has done that," was the reply; "I meant what I said."

In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some robuster
virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars; and the
robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on the other
hand, Jackanapes (who had a boy's full share of the little beast and the
young monkey in his natural composition) was none the worse, at his
tender years, for learning some maidenliness,--so far as maidenliness
means decency, pity, unselfishness, and pretty behavior.

And it is due to him to say that he was an obedient boy, and a boy whose
word could be depended on, long before his grandfather the General came
to live at the Green.

He was obedient; that is, he did what his great-aunt told him. But--oh,
dear! oh, dear!--the pranks he played, which it had never entered into
her head to forbid!

It was when he had just been put into skeletons (frocks never suited
him) that he became very friendly with Master Tony Johnson, a younger
brother of the young gentleman who sat in the puddle on purpose. Tony
was not enterprising, and Jackanapes led him by the nose. One summer's
evening they were out late, and Miss Jessamine was becoming anxious,
when Jackanapes presented himself with a ghastly face all besmirched
with tears. He was unusually subdued.

"I'm afraid," he sobbed,--"if you please, I'm very much afraid that Tony
Johnson's dying in the churchyard."

Miss Jessamine was just beginning to be distracted, when she smelt
Jackanapes.

"You naughty, naughty boys! Do you mean to tell me that you've been
smoking?"

"Not pipes," urged Jackanapes; "upon my honor, aunty, not pipes. Only
cigars like Mr. Johnson's! and only made of brown paper with a very,
very little tobacco from the shop inside them."

Whereupon Miss Jessamine sent a servant to the churchyard, who found
Tony Johnson lying on a tombstone, very sick, and having ceased to
entertain any hopes of his own recovery.

If it could be possible that any "unpleasantness" could arise between
two such amiable neighbors as Miss Jessamine and Mrs. Johnson,