the front,
and clasping them both to her with a little convulsive movement.

Perhaps the good cry she has on top of those two loving little heads
does her more good than anything else could possibly have done.

CHAPTER XXXI.

"A bitter and perplexed 'What shall I do?'
Is worse to man than worse necessity."

Three months have come and gone, and winter is upon us. It is close on
Christmastide indeed. All the trees lie bare and desolate, the leaves
have fallen from them, and their sweet denizens, the birds, flown or
dead.

Evening has fallen. The children are in the nursery, having a last romp
before bed hour. Their usual happy hunting ground for that final fling
is the drawing-room, but finding the atmosphere there, to-night,
distinctly cloudy, they had beaten a simultaneous retreat to Bridget and
the battered old toys upstairs. Children, like rats, dislike discomfort.

Mrs. Monkton, sitting before the fire, that keeps up a continuous sound
as musical as the rippling of a small stream, is leaning back in her
chair, her pretty forehead puckered into a thousand doubts. Joyce, near
her, is as silent as she is; while Mr. Monkton, after a vain pretence at
being absorbed in the morning paper (diligently digested at 11 this
morning), flings it impatiently on the floor.

"What's the good of your looking like that, Barbara? If you were
compelled to accept this invitation from my mother, I could see some
reason for your dismal glances, but when you know I am as far from
wishing you to accept it as you are yourself, why should----?"

"Ah! but are you?" says his wife with a swift, dissatisfied glance at
him. The dissatisfaction is a good deal directed toward herself.

"If you could make her sure of that," says Joyce, softly. "I have tried
to explain it to her, but----"

"I suppose I am unreasonable," says Barbara, rising, with a little laugh
that has a good deal of grief in it. "I suppose I ought to believe,"
turning to her husband, "that you are dying for me to refuse this
invitation from the people who have covered me with insult for eight
years, when I know well that you are dying for me to accept it."

"Oh! if you know that," says Monkton rather feebly, it must be
confessed. This fatally late desire on the part of his people to become
acquainted with his wife and children has taken hold of him, has lived
with him through the day, not for anything he personally could possibly
gain by it, but because of