t they may become good!

Mrs Merryboy, however, has improved in every way, and is more blooming
than ever, as well as a trifle stouter, but Mrs Merryboy senior,
although advanced spiritually, has degenerated a little physically. The
few teeth that kept her nose and chin apart having disappeared, her
mouth has also vanished, though there is a decided mark which tells
where it was--especially when she speaks or smiles. The hair on her
forehead has become as pure white as the winter snows of Canada.
Wrinkles on her visage have become the rule, not the exception, but as
they all run into comical twists, and play in the forms of humour, they
may, perhaps, be regarded as a physical improvement. She is stone deaf
now, but this also may be put to the credit side of her account, for it
has rendered needless those awkward efforts to speak loud and painful
attempts to hear which used to trouble the family in days gone by. It
is quite clear, however, when you look into granny's coal-black eyes,
that if she were to live to the age of Methuselah she will never be
blind, nor ill-natured, nor less pleased with herself, her surroundings,
and the whole order of things created!

But who are these that sit so gravely and busily engaged with breakfast
as though they had not the prospect of another meal that year? Two
young men and a young girl. One young man is broad and powerful though
short, with an incipient moustache and a fluff of whisker. The other is
rather tall, slim, and gentlemanly, and still beardless. The girl is
little, neat, well-made, at the budding period of life, brown-haired,
brown-eyed, round, soft--just such a creature as one feels disposed to
pat on the head and say, "My little pet!"

Why, these are two "waifs" and a "stray!" Don't you know them? Look
again. Is not the stout fellow our friend Bobby Frog, the slim one Tim
Lumpy, and the girl Martha Mild? But who, in all London, would believe
that these were children who had bean picked out of the gutter?
Nobody--except those good Samaritans who had helped to pick them up, and
who could show you the photographs of what they once were and what they
now are.

Mr Merryboy, although changed a little as regards legs, was not in the
least deteriorated as to lungs. As Granny, Mrs Merryboy, and the young
people sat at breakfast he was heard at an immense distance off,
gradually making his way towards the house.

"Something seems to be wrong with father this morn