them
with feeble thanks and an odd sort of conscious dread, though she
could with perfect truth have denied either 'taking it' or reading
it.

Bessie came to her relief. 'Thank you,' she said; 'we do; some of
us have it. Is your daughter's article signed A. A., and doesn't it
describe a boarding-house on the Italian lakes? I thought it very
clever and amusing.'

Mrs. Arthuret's face lighted up. 'Oh yes, my dear,' slipped out in
her delight. 'And do you know, it all came of her letter to one of
the High School ladies, who is sister to the sub-editor, such a
clever, superior girl! She read it to the headmistress and all, and
they agreed that it was too good to be lost, and Arthurine copied it
out and added to it, and he--Mr. Jarrett--said it was just what he
wanted--so full of information and liveliness--and she is writing
some more for him.'

Mrs. Merrifield was rather shocked, but she felt that she herself
was in a glass house, was, in fact, keeping a literary daughter, so
she only committed herself to, 'She is very young.'

'Only one-and-twenty,' returned Mrs. Arthuret triumphantly; 'but
then she has had such advantages, and made such use of them.
Everything seems to come at once, though, perhaps, it is unthankful
to say so. Of course, it is no object now, but I could not help
thinking what it would have been to us to have discovered this
talent of hers at the time when we could hardly make both ends
meet.'

'She will find plenty of use for it,' said Mrs. Merrifield, who, as
the wife of a country squire and the mother of nine children, did
not find it too easy to make her ends meet upon a larger income.

'Oh yes! indeed she will, the generous child. She is full of plans
for the regeneration of the village.'

Poor Mrs. Merrifield! this was quite too much for her. She thought
it irreverent to apply the word in any save an ecclesiastical sense;
nor did she at all desire to have the parish, which was considered
to be admirably worked by the constituted authorities,
'regenerated,' whatever that might mean, by a young lady of one-and-
twenty. She rose up and observed to her daughter that she saw papa
out upon the lawn, and she thought it was time to go home.

Mrs. Arthuret came out with them, and found what Bessie could only
regard as a scene of desolation. Though gentlemen, as a rule, have
no mercy on trees, and ladies are equally inclined to cry, 'Woodman,
spare that tree,' the rule was reversed, for