"Ah! well, you're none the worse off for that; and you can't help having no mother. I dare say you'll try to make out that you have been a stolen child, to excite sympathy, and impose upon the benevolent and tender-hearted, eh ?-the charitable and philanthropic people who endow beggary and roguery. Do you know what philanthropy is ?"

"No, mum; please, mum."

"Ah! I dare say you don't even know your alphabet. I dare say you think it's something to eat."

"I don't know, mum, please; but will you buy-somepegs ?"

"No, child, certainly not. Miss Winthorpe-Edith, I say!" shouted Mrs. Gompson, turning her head into the house; whereupon Jacob gave further signs of excitement and agitation, such as had almost attracted the griffin eyes of Aunt Keziah to the gooseberry bushes. "What's the matter now?" asked Spen, in a whisper.

"Never mind," said Jacob, in reply. "Fate is only having a lark with us, as Windgate Williams would say. Let the magician go on :let the play be played out."

"All right," whispered Spen.

don't interrupt her."

"Miss Winthorpe has her cue;

A young lady in a light morning dress came to the door.

"Edith, by all that's good and beautiful!" said Jacob.

"My angel! my angel!" said Spen. "My Titania! The lady I

told thee of."

"Do keep quiet, Spen," said Jacob; "we shall be discovered." "You make more noise than I do," replied Spen; "keep quiet yourself; you are almost shaking the leaves off that tree."

"Mary, Mary," exclaimed Mrs. Gompson, looking straight in the direction of Jacob. "Those cats are among the gooseberry bushes again. Go and drive them away, every berry will be shaken off; we shall not have gooseberries to make a tart of, much more for preserving."

"Now you have done it," whispered Spen; "here's a go. I will frighten her into fits if she comes."

Spen pushed back his hat, lifted up his collar, dropped his jaw, and struck a most strange and idiotic attitude, which convulsed Jacob with silent laughter. The change was as rapid as it was grotesque. The face was quite a psychological triumph. Jacob was at once carried back to his early meeting with Spen. He laughed several big berries to the ground in spite of all his efforts to control himself. Fortunately, however, Mary was making bread, and it was not

convenient for her to leave the dough in which she was plunged up to her elbows. The comedy was therefore not so abruptly closed as the two friends in the garden had feared it might be.

"Miss Winthorpe," said Mrs. Gompson, "bring Miss Grace Wilmott and Masters Barnby and Trundleton here."

At Edith's bidding three children under ten came to the door. "Now, Miss Wilmott and Masters Barnby and Trundleton," said Mrs. Gompson, surveying them with pride and authority, "I wish you to teach each other a little lesson. Little gipsy girl"

"Yes, mum."

"Do you see this nice happy well-dressed young lady and young gentlemen?"

"Yes, mum."

"This happiness and luxury is the fruit not only of good breeding, but of good citizenship and education. Bear that in mind, will you?" "Yes, mum," said the little hawker, beginning to cry.

"I thought that would affect your hardened little heart. Now Miss Grace Wilmott and Masters Barnby and Trundleton, you see this ragged, dirty little child?"

"Yes, ma'am," said the three in a falsetto chorus.

"That matted hair is the result of bad citizenship, loose habits, non-attendance at church, the want of knowing a-b, ab, and c-o-w, cow, and other rudiments of learning, which lead up to an acquaintance with the abstruse sciences. Will you remember that?"

"Yes, Mrs. Gompson," said the chorus again.

"Very well, that is what I call a practical lesson of life, a true system of teaching social economy and the rights and advantages of good citizenship. Gipsy girl, here is a penny for you. You may go and never come here again."

"Yes, mum ;" and the child, with her eyes bent on the ground, went meekly one way, while Mrs. Gompson marched pompously in another direction leading to the school, satisfied that she had done her duty and at the same time been guilty of a little womanly weakness is supporting vagrancy with her purse.

The griffin had hardly turned away before Edith shut the door hurriedly and Spen darted off after the little black-eyed hawker. Jacob thought it best to remain where he was, and hold a council of war with himself.

In a few moments Spen, however, beckoned him with both hands. Jacob hastened to his friend.

"Such an adventure!" exclaimed Spen, his sallow face glowing, with animation.

"Well, well, what is it ?"

"I had just caught the poor little beggar at the same time that Titania swooped down upon her.

"Who? who?"

"Titania-Flora-Dorcas-Hebe-Miranda-heaven knows what

her proper name is-Edith you call her.

She had hurried out of the front door to give the child money, and, by the Lord! I've kissed her. Now, it is no good frowning on a fellow; I couldn't help it. She's my fate, and, by Jupiter! she shall go back to London with me!"

When Spen's boisterous declarations were somewhat subdued, Jacob told him all he knew of Edith, and ventured to predict that she had been induced to leave home and take a situation as teacher owing to the unkind treatment and jealousy of her sisters. "And what do you propose to do?" said Spen, his eyes full of astonishment and wonder.

"To take you into the dear old house, my boy, and, if you are willing, introduce you formally to your fate."

"Willing!" exclaimed Spen with theatrical action and fervour. "Away, away! my soul's in arms, and eager for the fray."

CHAPTER XLVI.

HOW JACOB PERFORMED A DELICATE NEGOTIATION ON BEHALF OF MR. PAUL FERRIS, TOGETHER WITH OTHER INTERESTING INFORMATION.

"ON second thoughts, Spen, you had better let me see the lady alone," said Jacob, when the two were on the threshold of the wellknown front door.

"My own thought, with a but," said Spen..

"Well, what is the but? Go on, mon ami.”

"Perhaps it is only 'much ado about nothing;' but you will remember Claudio's lines :—

Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love;

Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent: for beauty is a witch,

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood."

"Is it come to this, i' faith?" said Jacob, smiling.

"It was the flat transgression of the schoolboy, that being overjoyed with finding a bird's nest, he showed it to his companion, who stole it."

"Fie! fie! Benedict's philosophy does not apply here. Edith is not in mine eye the sweetest lady that e'er I look'd upon;' she has

only a second place."

"There thou strikest home. But art thou quite sure that all is settled between thee and thy woodland Venus?"

"What! Lucy?" said Jacob, laughing at the grotesque leer with which Spen asked the question.

"The same."

"Have no fear, Spen-Edith shall be yours, if you are in earnest." "Raise then the fatal knocker, at once. When your embassy is over you'll find me at the Blue Posts, a fortifying of myself for Coopid's answer;" and away went Spen Whiffler of old, cutting capers across the road, to the intense delight of two small boys, a slipshod girl, and a draper's assistant. The last had been to the big house, hard by, with a bundle of ribbons. He had nothing else left to do but to stare at Spen. Vainly endeavouring to support himself, in an immoderate fit of laughter, on a treacherous yard-measure, the frail rod broke and sent the grinning youth sprawling upon his paper box, before the actor could be said to have pulled a single face at him.

Jacob was admitted to the old schoolroom by a girl with patches of dough clinging to a pair of ruddy arms, which she partly shielded with a white apron.

She didna knaw whether Miss Winthorpe would see him or not. What name wor it? Martyn of Dinsley? Well, she'd go and tell her. He moit sit down a bit.

Jacob sat down, and, happily, before he had made himself very melancholy with the remembrances of the time when he sat in that same room with his father, on the occasion of the memorable visit to Bonsall, Miss Edith Winthorpe entered. She came forward and bowed very politely to Jacob, and said quite naturally that she was very glad to see him.

"Perhaps I should apologise for calling without an introduction," said Jacob, a little at a loss to explain his business.

"I hope it is not necessary for people belonging to the same town to apologise for knowing each other in a strange place."

"Thank you, Miss Winthorpe. I like your frankness; but this is more than a mere visit of courtesy: I have called upon rather a delicate business," said Jacob.

"Indeed," said Edith, losing her self-possession for a moment.

"Oh! oh!" said the doughy domestic, who had been listening at the key-hole.

Edith has since confessed that she expected a declaration of love from Jacob, and that she was quite prepared to receive it kindly.

"Then in the first place, Miss Winthorpe, I beg to tender to you the most abject apologies of a friend of mine whose love rather outran his discretion this morning."

"Indeed!" said Edith again, and this time in a little confusion, rendered more apparent by a sudden doubt as to the motives of Jacob's visit.

"He is a gentleman, a man of taste and feeling, of noble and generous impulses. I have known him for years; and he has seen you."

Edith blushed and began to twist her handkerchief round her fingers.

"To be plain with you, Miss Winthorpe, he wishes to be introduced to you, and if you can like him, he is ready to marry you whenever you will name the day. There!"

"There! Yes, I think you may say, 'There.' A nice piece of business to come upon and to propound before one has spoken half a dozen words to you, Mr. Martyn," said Edith, rising and opening the door, to the consternation of the domestic, who was so deeply interested in the conversation that she stood gaping at Edith, with only a vague idea that she had been caught in the act.

"I thought I heard you, Mary," said Edith, calmly; "perhaps you will step inside and take a seat?"

Mary sneaked away and plunged her arms once more into the dough, which she beat and buffeted and rolled about in the most savage manner; sad illustrations of her wrath being exhibited the next morning 'in the flat hard cakes that were placed on Mrs. Gompson's breakfast-table.

Edith was not much disconcerted at this amusing incident; indeed, she laughed heartily when she had closed the door upon Mary, and turning to Jacob said: "Well, what is this gentleman like? Is he handsome? Has he money? You see I am quite a woman of the world. I have left home to seek my fortune; and I must be my own mamma and solicitor in this matter."

And then she laughed again, at which Jacob was not pleased. "But I think, perhaps, it would be best for me to send for Mrs. Gompson and take her advice," she said, in a graver mood.

"No! no! for goodness sake don't do that," said Jacob. "But is this proper, Mr. Martyn, to call upon a young lady when "