tle scorn--

"_A Father kind, a Husband dear,
A faithful Friend, lies buried here_."

The jingle lulled him asleep in his railway carriage, and he awoke in
London. Driving home, he paid the cabby, rushed up to his room three
stairs at a bound, unlocked his safe and pulled out the great design.
In one corner he had even drawn up a list of the eminent men who
should be his pall-bearers. Certainly such a tomb would make Jenkins
turn in his grave.

He spread the plan on the table, with a paper-weight on each corner,
and sat down before it. After considering it for an hour, he arose
dissatisfied.

"Jenkins had a heap of flowers over him--common flowers, to be sure,
but fresh enough. I dare say I could arrange for a supply, though.
It's that confounded doggerel--

'_A Father kind, a Husband dear_.'

"That's Mrs. Jenkins's taste, I suppose. Still--of course I could
better the verse; but one can't stick up a lie over one's remains. I
wish to God I had a disconsolate wife, or a child, if only to spite
Jenkins."

And I believe, my dear young lady, that underneath his tomb (whereon
there now stands a marble figure of Fame and blows a gilt trumpet) he
is still wishing it.

EGG-STEALING.

It wanted less than an hour to high water when Miss Marty Lear heard
her brother's boat take ground on the narrow beach below the garden,
and set the knives and glasses straight while she listened for the
click of the garden-latch.

A line of stunted hazels ran along the foot of the garden and hid the
landing-place from Miss Lear as she stood at the kitchen window gazing
down steep alleys of scarlet runners. But above the hazels she could
look across to the fruit-growing village of St. Kits, and catch a
glimpse at high tide of the intervening river, or towards low water of
the mud-banks shining in the sun.

It was Miss Lear's custom to look much on this landscape from this
window: had, in fact, been her habit for close upon forty years. And
this evening, when the latch clicked at length, and her brother in
his market-suit come slouching up the path between the parallels of
garden-stuff, her eyes rested all the while upon the line of grey
water above and beyond his respectable hat.

Nor, when he entered the kitchen, hitched this hat upon a peg in the
wall--where its brim accurately fitted a sort of dull halo in the
whitewash--did he appear to want any welcome from her. He was a
long-jawed man of sixty-five, she a long