en a hindrance and a help.
WORDSWORTH.

Etheldred awoke long before time for getting up, and lay pondering over
her visions. Margaret had sympathised, and therefore they did not seem
entirely aerial. To earn money by writing was her favourite plan, and
she called her various romances in turn before her memory, to judge
which might be brought down to sober pen and ink. She considered till it
became not too unreasonably early to get up. It was dark, but there was
a little light close to the window: she had no writing-paper, but she
would interline her old exercise-book. Down she ran, and crouching
in the school-room window-seat, she wrote on in a trance of eager
composition, till Norman called her, as he went to school, to help him
to find a book.

This done, she went up to visit Margaret, to tell her the story, and
consult her. But this was not so easy. She found Margaret with little
Daisy lying by her, and Tom sitting by the fire over his Latin.

"Oh, Ethel, good-morning, dear! you are come just in time."

"To take baby?" said Ethel, as the child was fretting a little.

"Yes, thank you, she has been very good, but she was tired of lying
here, and I can't move her about," said Margaret.

"Oh, Margaret, I have such a plan," said Ethel, as she walked about with
little Gertrude; but Tom interrupted.

"Margaret, will you see if I can say my lesson?" and the thumbed Latin
grammar came across her just as Dr. May's door opened, and he came in
exclaiming, "Latin grammar! Margaret, this is really too much for you.
Good-morning, my dears. Ha! Tommy, take your book away, my boy. You must
not inflict that on sister now. There's your regular master, Richard, in
my room, if it is fit for his ears yet. What, the little one here too?"

"How is your arm, papa?" said Margaret. "Did it keep you awake?"

"Not long--it set me dreaming though, and a very romantic dream it was,
worthy of Ethel herself."

"What was it, papa?"

"Oh, it was an odd thing, joining on strangely enough with one I had
three or four and twenty years ago, when I was a young man, hearing
lectures at Edinburgh, and courting--" he stopped, and felt Margaret's
pulse, asked her a few questions, and talked to the baby. Ethel longed
to hear his dream, but thought he would not like to go on; however, he
did presently.

"The old dream was the night after a picnic on Arthur's Seat with the
Mackenzies; mamma and Aunt Flora were t