aintly, a
something of the stern meaning in her valorous chant.

My invisible companion was singing also, and seemed at times to be
chuckling softly to himself,--doubtless at thought of the strange new
lessons he was teaching me; perhaps, too, at a special bit of
waggishness he had still in store. For when at last he grew weary of
such insignificant earth-bound company, he deserted me at a certain spot
I knew; then dropped, subsided, and slunk away into nothingness. I
raised my eyes, and before me, grim and lichened, stood the ancient
whipping-post of the village; its sides fretted with the initials of a
generation that scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stout
rusty shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that generation's
ancestors as had dared to mock at order and law. Had I been an infant
Sterne, here was a grand chance for sentimental output! As things were,
I could only hurry homewards, my moral tail well between my legs, with
an uneasy feeling, as I glanced back over my shoulder, that there was
more in this chance than met the eye.

And outside our gate I found Charlotte, alone and crying. Edward, it
seemed, had persuaded her to hide, in the full expectation of being duly
found and ecstatically pounced upon; then he had caught sight of the
butcher's cart, and, forgetting his obligations, had rushed off for a
ride. Harold, it further appeared, greatly coveting tadpoles, and
top-heavy with the eagerness of possession, had fallen into the pond.
This, in itself, was nothing; but on attempting to sneak in by the
back-door, he had rendered up his duckweed-bedabbled person into the
hands of an aunt, and had been promptly sent off to bed; and this, on a
holiday, was very much. The moral of the whipping-post was working
itself out; and I was not in the least surprised when, on reaching home,
I was seized upon and accused of doing something I had never even
thought of. And my frame of mind was such, that I could only wish most
heartily that I had done it.

A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE

IN our small lives that day was eventful when another uncle was to come
down from town, and submit his character and qualifications (albeit
unconsciously) to our careful criticism. Earlier uncles had been weighed
in the balance, and--alas!--found grievously wanting. There was Uncle
Thomas--a failure from the first. Not that his disposition was
malevolent, nor were his habits such as to unfit him for decent society;