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be wasted. A woman must be busy indeed haps in a laborious office or an absorbing who cannot find some few hours in each day profession. And how many men engaged in for real mental work of some kind. So to such offices and such professions do contrive do doubtless requires some effort, perhaps to cultivate literature and scholarship alongsome self-denial. It requires a methodical side of them. Dr. Arnold and Sir George arrangement of the day, it requires resolu- Lewis are the two most illustrious examples; tion to tear oneself away from petty tempta- but many and many a smaller man has tions. But where there is a will there is a honestly and profitably done the same thing way. In an unmarried woman the plea of on a smaller scale. And many a woman want of time is ridiculous. All that is need-may do what, in her position, is the same. ed is that time should be spent instead of The house of the scholar or the scientific being wasted, arranged instead of frittered man need not be less orderly, nor the away. The day is long enough for some- management of his children less effective, thing besides crochet and croquet and novels because his wife finds some hours of the day and small-talk. It is long enough for some- to qualify herself to be, not his guide or his thing besides parish visiting and "eclesiasti- teacher, but his intelligent and appreciating cal dissipation." A married woman of course companion, in some sort even his critic and has plenty to do. But she has not more to do his adviser. than her husband or brother, engaged per

talk of our forefathers. That our pronounciation not only of English, but of foreign languages, has materially altered with this generation, there can be little doubt.-London Society,

STORIES ABOUT ST. PAUL.-By Emily G. Nesbitt. London: Hatchard & Co., 187, Piccadilly.

THE CONVENTIONALITIES OF PRONUNCIATION. What shall we say of the conventionalities of pronunciation, and the mysterious caprice which regulates the value of our British vowels and consonants? In the primers and horn-books of infant life, D, O, G, has spelt dog from time immemorial. But the dandies of the Restoration called that intelligent little quadruped a dag, and the dandies of our own time called it a dawg. Much commiseration has been felt for the" poor letter H," and the neglect with which it has been treated in cockney dialect. But the letter R is worse off, for its use is being gradually THESE "Stories" are addressed to a very abandoned in those quarters where the purity of little boy who has not yet read the Scripturethe Queen's English is supposed to be most scru- narrative of the same incidents. The writer pulously preserved. As an initial, it was once the has a charming manner, which cannot fail to fashion to pronounce it as a W; and indeed it was interest children, and her stories are so arranged only the other day that I heard a man speaking of as to secure more than a passing attention. She some widiculous ewwor which had cwept into a is never led away from the strict narrative to celebwated dwama, and wemained long there after seek an effect by any imaginary occurrences; it had been witten, wead, wepeated and wehearsed. the history is related in its grand simplicity, This was an affectation which came in with being merely told in beautifully simple lanLytton Bulwer, and departed with Thackeray. guage, admirably adapted to the capacity of There are few, even of our youngest exquisites, little readers. Nothing is forgotten in this hiswho venture to speak in such accents now. But tory of the " Apostle of the Gentiles." His the R is, nevertheless, slurred over and even travels, his perils by land and by water, his omitted by many, who would scout the idea of speeches and miracles, are all dwelt upon, even imitating a natural defect of speech. What has to the writing of his letters. The history is become, for instance, of the final consonant in made to teach its own lessons; here are no the word "father"? In west country dialect it no harsh precepts, no conventional morality: is still preserved, but in polite circles it is pro the firm faith of Saul of Tarsus is made to apnounced futha; never, nevah, and so forth. Half pear from his works as he himself would have a century ago, the letter A was similarly mis- it; and the interest excited in his life is sure to used. Old gentlemen still exist who speak of place him in his true position as a teacher and St. Jeames's Street and the Peletinete. E and I guide. The little ones who may have the good changed their places. "Arithmetic " was called fortune to read the "Stories about St. Paul," arethmetic, and "messenger "became missinger. as told by Emily G. Nesbitt, will testify their To this day, Lord Russell declares that he is pleasure to her in a very satisfactory manner obleeged, and it is a curious proof how extremes by wishing to read many more of her Biblemeet, that the same expression is adopted by the stories, a work which her pen is so thoroughly humblest laborer in Devonshire. The truth is, well qualified to undertake. Messrs. Hatchard that, when the word was originally borrowed & Co. have printed the word in large type on from the French, every one called it "obleeged; "good paper, while the neat and excellent bindand this provincialism, like many others of the ing renders it a capital present.

same class, is nothing more than the old-fashioned

Public Opinion.

CHAPTER VII.

FORESHADOWS OF LOVE PERILS.

IF Squire Hamley had been unable to tell Molly who had ever been thought of as her father's second wife, Fate was all this time preparing an answer of a pretty positive kind to her wondering curiosity. But Fate is a cunning hussy, and builds up her plans as imperceptibly as a bird builds her nest; and with much the same kind of unconsidered trifles. The first "trifle" of an event was the disturbance which Jenny (Mr. Gibson's cook) chose to make at Bethia's being dismissed. Bethia_was a distant relation and protégée of Jenny's, and she chose to say it was Mr. Coxe the tempter who ought to have "been sent packing," not Bethia the tempted, the victim. In this view there was quite enough plausibility to make Mr. Gibson feel that he had been rather unjust. He had, however, taken care to provide Bethia with another situation, to the full as good as that which she held in his family. Jenny, nevertheless, chose to give warning; and though Mr. Gibson knew full well from former experience that her warnings were words, not deeds, he hated the discomfort, the uncertainty, the entire disagreeableness of meeting a woman at any time in his house, who wore a grievance and an injury upon her face as legibly as Jenny took care to do.

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Down into the middle of this small domestic trouble came another, and one of greater consequence. Miss Eyre had gone with her old mother, and her orphan nephews and nieces, to the seaside, during Molly's absence, which was only intended at first to last for a fortnight. After about ten days of this time had elapsed, Mr. Gibson received a beautifully written, beautifully worded, admirably folded, and most neatly sealed letter from Miss Eyre. Her eldest nephew had fallen ill of scarlet-fever, and there was every probability that the younger children would be attacked by the same complaint. It was distressing enough for poor Miss Eyre, this additional expense, this anxiety, the long detention from home which the illness involved. But she said not a word of any inconvenience to herself; she only apologized with humble sincerity for her inability to return at the appointed time to her charge in Mr. Gibson's family; meekly adding, that perhaps it was as well, for Molly had never had the scarlet-fever, and even if Miss Eyre had been able to leave the orphan children to return to her employments, it might not have been a safe or a prudent step.

"To be sure not," said Mr. Gibson, tearing the letter in two, and throwing it into the hearth, where he soon saw it burnt to ashes. "I wish I'd a five-pound house and not a woman within ten miles of me! I might have some peace then." Apparently, he forgot Mr. Coxe's powers of making mischief; but indeed he might have traced that evil back to unconscious Molly. The martyr-cook's entrance to take away the breakfast things, which she announced by a heavy sigh, roused Mr. Gibson from thought to action.

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Molly must stay a little longer at Hamley," he resolved. "They've often asked for her, and now they'll have enough of her, I think. But I can't have her back here just yet; and so the best I can do for her is to leave her where she is. Mrs Hamley seems very fond of her; and the child is looking happy, and stronger in health. I'll ride round by Hamley to-day at any rate, and see how the land lies."

He found Mrs. Hamley lying on a sofa placed under the shadow of the great cedartree on the lawn. Molly was flitting about her, gardening away under her directions, tying up the long sea-green stalks of bright budded carnations, snipping off dead roses. Oh, here's papa!" she cried out joyfully, as he rode up to the white paling which separated the trim lawn and trimmer flower-garden from the rough park-like ground in front of the house.

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"Come in, come here through the drawing-room window!" said Mrs. Hamley, raising herself on her elbow. We've got a rose-tree to show you, that Molly has budded all by herself. We are both so proud of it!"

So Mr. Gibson rode round to the stables, left his horse there, and made his way through the house to the open-air summerparlour under the cedar-tree, where there were chairs, table, books, and tangled work. Somehow, he rather disliked asking for Molly to prolong her visit; so he determined to swallow his bitter first, and then take the pleasure of the delicious day, the sweet repose, the murmurous, scented air. Molly stood by him, her hand on his shoulder. He sat opposite to Mrs. Hamley.

"I have come here to-day to ask for a favour," he began.

"Granted before you name it. Am not I a bold woman?

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He smiled and bowed, but went straight on with his speech.

"Miss Eyre, who has been Molly's governess, I suppose I must call her for many years, writes to-day to say that one of the

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An uncomfortable suspicion flashed across his mind. He pulled her round, and looked straight and piercingly into her innocent face. Her colour came at his unwonted scrutiny; but her sweet eyes were filled with wonder rather than with any feeling which he dreaded to find. For an instant, he had doubted whether young red-headed Mr. Coxe's love might not have called out a response in his daughter's breast; but he was quite clear now.

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Molly, you're rude to begin with. I don't know how you're to make your peace with Mrs. Hamley, I'm sure. And, in the next place, do you think you're wiser than I am? or that I don't want you at home, if all other things were conformable? Stay where you are, and be thankful!"

Molly knew him well enough to be certain that the prolongation of her visit at Hamley was quite a decided affair in his mind; and then she was smitten with a sense of ingratitude. She left her father, and went to Mrs. Hamley, and bent over her and kissed her; but she did not speak. Mrs. Hamley took hold of her hand, and made room on the sofa for her.

"I was going to have asked for a longer visit the next time you came, Mr. Gibson. We are such happy friends, are not we, Molly? and now that this good little nephew of Miss Eyre's".

"I wish he was whipped," said Mr. Gibson. "has given us such a capital reason, I shall keep Molly for a real long visitation. You must come over and see us very often. There's a room here for you always, you know; and I don't see why you should not start on your rounds from Hamley every morning, just as well as from Hollingford." "Thank you. If you had not been so kind to my little girl, I might be tempted to say something rude in answer to your last speech."

"Pray, say it. You won't be easy till you have given it out, I know."

"Mrs. Hamley has found out from whom I get my rudeness," said Molly, triumphantly. "It's an hereditary quality."

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"I was going to say that proposal of yours that I should sleep at Hamley was just like a woman's idea, all kindness, and no common sense. How in the world would my patients find me out, seven miles from my accustomed place? They'd be sure to send for some other doctor; and I should be ruined in a month.'

"Could not they send on here? A messenger costs very little."

"Fancy old Goody Henbury struggling up to my surgery, groaning at every step, and then being told to just step on seven miles farther! Or take the other end of society: I don't think my Lady Cumnor's smart groom would thank me for having to ride on to Hamley every time his mistress wants me."

"Well, well, I submit! I am a woman. Molly, thou art a woman! Go, and order some strawberries and cream for this father of yours. Such humble offices fall within the province of women. Strawberries and cream are all kindness and no common sense; for they'll give him a horrid fit of indigestion."

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Please speak for yourself, Mrs. Hamley," said Molly merrily. "I ate-oh, such a great basketful yesterday! and the squire went himself to the dairy, and brought me out a great bowl of cream when he found me at my busy work. And I'm as well as ever I was to-day, and never had a touch of indigestion near me."

"She's a good girl," said her father, when she had danced out of hearing. The words were not quite an inquiry, he was so certain of his answer. There was a mixture of tenderness and trust in his eyes, as he awaited the reply, which came in a moment.

"She's a darling! I cannot tell you how fond the squire and I are of her, both of us. I am so delighted to think she is not to go away for a long time. The first thing I thought of this morning when I wakened up, was, that she would soon have to return to you, unless I could persuade you into leaving her with me a little longer. And now she must stay-oh, two months at least!"

It was quite true that the squire had become very fond of Molly. The chance of having a young girl dancing, and singing inarticulate ditties about the house and garden, was indescribable in its novelty to him. And then Molly was so willing and so

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"Stay longer! Did Gibson ask for it? "Yes! I don't see what else is to become of her Miss Eyre away and all. It's a very awkward position for a motherless girl like her to be at the head of a household with two young men in it."

"That's Gibson's look-out: he should have thought of it before taking pupils, or apprentices, or whatever he calls them."

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My dear squire! why, I thought you'd be as glad as I was - as I am to keep Molly, I asked her to stay for an indefinite time two months at least."

"And to be in the house with Osborne! Roger, too, will be at home."

By the cloud in the squire's eyes, Mrs. Hamley read his mind.

"Oh, she's not at all the sort of girl young men of their age would take to! We like her because we see what she really is; but lads of one or two and twenty want all the accessories of a young woman."

"Want what?" growled the squire.

"Such things as becoming dress, style of manner. They would not at their age even see that she is pretty: their ideas of beauty would include colour."

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I suppose all that's very clever; but I don't understand it. All I know is, that it's a very dangerous thing to shut two young men of one and three and twenty up in a country-house like this, with a girl of seventeen choose what her gowns may be like, or her hair, or her eyes. And I told you particularly I didn't want Osborne, or either of them, indeed, to be falling in love with her. I'm very much annoyed."

Mrs Hamley's face fell: she became a little pale.

"Shall we make arrangements for their stopping away while she is here; staying up at Cambridge, or reading with some one? going abroad for a month or two?"

No: you've been reckoning this ever so long on their coming home. I've seen the marks of the weeks on your almanac. I'd sooner speak to Gibson, and tell him he must take his daughter away, for it's not convenient to us

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"My dear Roger! I beg you will do no such thing. It will be so unkind: it will give the lie to all I said yesterday. Don't, please, do that! For my sake, don't speak to Mr Gibson!"

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Well, well, don't put yourself in a flutter," for he was afraid of her becoming hysterical: "I'll speak to Osborne when he comes home, and tell him how much I should dislike anything of the kind."

"And Roger is always far too full of his natural history and comparative anatomy, and messes of that sort, to be thinking of falling in love with Venus herself. He has not the sentiment and imagination of Osborne."

“Ah, you don't know! you never can be sure about a young man! But with Roger it wouldn't so much signify. He would know he couldn't marry for years to come."

All that afternoon, the squire tried to steer clear of Molly, to whom he felt himself to have been an inhospitable traitor. But she was so perfectly unconscious of his shyness of her, and so merry and sweet in her behavior as a welcome guest, never distrusting him for a moment, however gruff he might be, that, by the next morning, she had completely won him round, and they were quite on the old terms again. At breakfast this very morning, a letter was passed from the squire to his wife, and back again, without a word as to its contents, but,

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Little did Molly apply these expressions to the piece of news Mrs. Hamley told her in the course of the day; namely, that her son Osborne had received an invitation to stay with a friend in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, and perhaps to make a tour on the Continent with him subsequently; and that, consequently, he would not accompany his brother when Roger came home.

Molly was very sympathetic. "Oh, dear! I am so sorry!"

Mrs. Hamley was thankful her husband was not present, Molly spoke the words so heartily.

"You have been thinking so long of his coming home. I am afraid it is a great disappointment."

Mrs. Hamley smiled — relieved.

"Yes: it is a disappointment certainly; but we must think of Osborne's pleasure. And with his poetical mind, he will write us such delightful travelling letters. Poor fellow! he must be going into the examination to-day! Both his father and I feel sure

though, that he will be a high wrangler. Only,I should like to have seen him, my own dear boy! But it is best as it is."

Molly was a little puzzled by this speech, but soon put it out of her head. It was a disappointment to her, too, that she should not see this beautiful, brilliant young man, his mother's hero. From time to time, her maiden fancy had dwelt upon what he would be like; how the lovely boy of the picture in Mrs. Hamley's dressing-room would have changed in the ten years that had elapsed since the likeness was taken; if he would read poetry aloud; if he would ever read his own poetry. However, in the never-ending feminine business of the day, she soon forgot her own disappointment; it only came back to her on first wakening the next morning, a vague something that was not quite so pleasant as she had anticipated, and then was banished as a subject of regret.

the thought of Roger's coming home. Mrs. Hamley had not seemed quite so well, or quite in such good spirits for two or three days before; and the squire himself had appeared to be put out without any visible cause. They had not chosen to tell Molly that Osborne's name had only appeared very low down in the mathematical tripos. So all that their visitor knew was that something was out of tune, and she hoped that Roger's coming home would set it to rights; for it was beyond the power of her small cares and wiles.

On Thursday, the housemaid apologized to her for some slight negligence in her bedroom, by saying she had been busy scouring Mr. Roger's rooms. "Not but what they were as clean as could be beforehand; but mistress would always have the young gentlemen's rooms cleaned afresh before they came home. If it had been Mr. Osborne, the whole house would have Her days at Hamley were well filled up had to be done; but to be sure he was the with the small duties that would have be- eldest son, so it was but likely." Molly longed to a daughter of the house had there was amused at this testimony to the rights been one. She made breakfast for the of heirship; but somehow she herself had lonely squire, and would willingly have car- fallen into the family manner of thinking ried up madame's but that daily piece of that nothing was too great or too good for work belonged to the squire, and was jeal-"the eldest son." In his father's eyes, ously guarded by him. She read the smaller print of the newspapers aloud to him, city articles, money and corn-markets ineluded. She strolled about the gardens with him, gathering fresh flowers, meanwhile, to deck the drawing-room against Mrs Hamley should come down. She was her companion when she took her drives in the close carriage: they read poetry and mild literature together in Mrs Hamley's sitting-room up stairs. She was quite clever at cribbage now, and could beat the squire if she took pains. Besides these things, there were her own independent ways of employing herself. She used to try to practise a daily hour on the grand old piano in the solitary drawing-room, because she had promised Miss Eyre she would do so. And she had found her way into the library, and used to undo the heavy bars of the shutters if the housemaid had forgotten this duty, and mount the ladder, sitting on the steps for an hour at a time, deep in some book of the old English classics. The summer days were very short to this happy girl

of se venteen.

CHAPTER VIII.

Osborne was the representative of the ancient house of Hamley of Hamley, the future owner of the land which had been theirs for a thousand years. His mother clung to him because they two were cast in the same mould, both physically and mentally because he bore her maiden name. She had indoctrinated Molly with her faith, and, in spite of her amusement at the housemaid's speech, the girl visitor would have been as anxious as any one to show her feudal loyalty to the heir, if indeed it had been he that was coming. After luncheon, Mrs. Hamley went to rest, in preparation for Roger's return; and Molly also retired to her own room, feeling that it would be better for her to remain there until dinner-time, and so to leave the father and mother to receive their boy in privacy. She took a book of MS. poems with her; they were all of Osborne Hamley's composition; and his mother had read some of them aloud to her young visitor more than once. Molly had asked permission to copy one or two of those which were her greatest favorites; and this quiet summer afternoon she took this copying for her employment, sitting at the pleasant open window, and losing herself in dreamy out-looks into the gardens and woods, quivering in the noontide heat. The house was so still, in its VOL. XXIX. 1358.

DRIFTING INTO DANGER.

ON Thursday, the quiet country household was stirred through all its fibres with

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

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