CHAPTER XIII.

WORK, AND REST.

"How his noble, earnest speeches
With untiring fervour came;
Helper of the poor and suffering,
Truly he deserved the name."

A. A. PROCTER.

AFTER many changes and trials, it happens to most of us that we come into a season of comparative calm and quietness.

Our lives are, so to speak, divided into chapters, some longer, some shorter; but there are few of us who cannot look back to certain eras and boundary lines, which, if unconsciously at the time, still most surely divide us from the past, and are as barriers which mark the severance from old ties, and that insensible stepping into a new order of things which, in their turn, become familiar, and in their turn, too, shall pass away.

Of the most monotonous and apparently uneventful lives this may be said to be true; but these changes are, in such cases, often hidden from all human eyes, and are not seen or noticed by others. In other lives such changes are patent to the most casual observers; and we see the poor suddenly made rich, the rich poor, the family so long untouched by disease or death

visited in quick succession by illnesses, and losses, and bereavements, or the troubled, changeful, unsettled life, by some unexpected circumstance become quiet and prosperous! Most truly has it been said that—

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"This world's law is ebb and flow;"

and experience teaches us more and more the force and deep significance of the words.

From the opening of that new year which saw Irene become Philip Dennistoun's wife, a time of happiness was given to her of which I could give no detail here. It was a daily interchange of thoughts and sympathies, an ever growing delight, which had its root deep, and from whence blossomed flowers of beauty and loveliness, of which the first were gathered in Eden, and which, in spite of the thorns and briars of little worries and petty troubles, true-hearted husbands and wives have continued to gather from that time till now. No very great measure of prosperity had been given them. Philip worked, and laboured, and distinguished himself at the Chancery Bar; and many eyes were upon him, and foretold greater things yet. His name was known in schemes for the help of the masses which lay near his own door. A brave and earnest Vicar of one of the East-end parishes in London was his great friend; and in the second year of his marriage, when he had sent Irene and his boy to Stow for a month's country air, he told her he was going to take a little independent holiday, where she could not follow him.

The shadow which gathered in her eyes cleared away, as he said,

"You must trust me, dear. I am going to sound some depths, and you shall hear the result."

She did trust him; and when, the day after they

parted, she had a letter from a certain Mercy Place, far down in the worst neighbourhood of the Docks, she understood it all.

"Once a-year," he wrote, "I must, at least, bring myself face to face with the evils which I so much desire to see ameliorated; once a-year, Irene, you will spare me for this end. Is it not better to gain a practical knowledge of the misery and the sin which abounds, than to write letters in the 'Times,' or to be Secretary to some great Relief Association, or vituperate Boards of Guardians?"

And Irene's heart answered, "Yes." Every year these depths were sounded; every year Irene bore all Mrs. Dennistoun's satire and regret that Philip should be so very eccentric; every year she gloried more in what her husband did; and the day when she was present at the opening of the large school-house was a proud day to her-when Philip inaugurated the machinery of a club for the working men, and a school for the children, and provided every means to awaken in the poor the desire of helping themselves, thereby pulling down, it may be by but a grain at a time, the huge mountain of pauperism, and misery, and sin, which now rises up in the heart of our great cities, and cries unto God with an exceeding bitter cry.

"What it must be to live here in all this ugliness, and want of beauty!" Irene said, as they turned their steps to the Vicarage together.

"Ah, what it is!" he answered. dear, I tried it for a month myself?

the twelve. It is nothing; but it

"Are you not glad,

One month out of is all I can do; and

I have seen and felt with these poor souls, which gives me a hold on them, and makes them trust me."

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"Yes; how they seem to look up to you, Philip. I wish I could help more."

You are

"No, darling; you could not help me more. my rest when I am tired, and my comfort always; besides, there is the boy to look after."

“And make him like you," she said, with a pressure on his arm.

So the years went on. "The boy," as his father always called him, was followed by three little sisters; and the small house in Wilton Place had to be exchanged for a larger one.

In the summer of the seventh year of their married life, Irene went with her children to Stow; and, after Philip's month in Mercy Place, George Sandford and he were to start for a mountain expedition, as of old.

Stow was a rambling old-fashioned many-gabled house, standing in its own wide grounds, and backed by its own trees and rising pasture lands.

On a hot August afternoon a little party was assembled on the lawn. A great tulip tree gave a pleasant shade, and beneath it were gathered the elders of the family, with books and work; while the children played about on the lawn, and were tossing a large ball about hither and thither. Presently Philip came rushing across the grass to his mother. He was the only boy in the group. Rosie's children were little girls, and they were about the same age as Irene's.

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I

"I am tired of the girls, mother," he said; may go with Uncle George to the station, to meet father?" "Take care, Philip-how rough you are you nearly upset my basket of wools. Irene; you really should keep that boy in order."

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Gently, Philip; you must mind what grandmamma

says. Yes, I think you may go to the station, if Uncle George will take you; but you must get that dirty face washed first, and your hair brushed."

He was off in a moment, his mother's eyes following him with a proud happy look.

"What a fine fellow he is," Rosie said;

exactly like Philip."

"and so

"I don't think he is nearly so good looking," said Mrs. Dennistoun; "certainly not as good looking as Philip used to be; but all his hard work, and these absurd ideas of his, have told on him.”

"I don't think so, mother," was Rosie's reply; "and I think Philip is, as he always was, the perfection of strength and activity."

"He is not near so tall as my George is he, dear?” said old Mrs. Sandford, who sat quietly in her arm-chair under the tree, with a thick rug under her feet, and only chimed in now and then with a little remark.

Her husband had died three years before, and George and Rosie were now the real master and mistress of Stow.

Rosie's attention to her husband's parents had been throughout very pleasant to witness; and now the old widow resigned herself to the quiet of the evening of life; and, as long as she had her own corner by the fireside in winter, and in the garden in summer, she was content. The unbounded admiration she had for the son of her old age was shared by his wife. Neither of them could do anything wrong in her eyes; and she was of such a placid, gentle disposition that her presence was never felt as an oppression.

Mrs. Dennistoun scarcely looked older than when we first saw her. Her fine figure was erect and still graceful,