temptuously. The other woman leaned back in her chair and screamed with laughter.

"Ah, ah, ah! well, if that ain't a good 'un," she said, when she had recovered her breath sufficiently to speak.

Clytie grew pale with fear.

"Hi! Bill," shouted the landlady, still leaning back and tossing up her arms in the activity of her merriment. “Bill, come here and look at a gal as doesn't know what being gay means."

Clytie almost fainted at sight of a hulking fellow who shambled forth from an adjoining room; shambled forth and stood transfixed in a pair of carpet slippers and a blue velvet coat.

"I beg your pardon," said Clytie, suddenly retiring into the passage and noticing, with a rush of hope, that the street door had not been closed behind her; "I fear I have made some mistake."

"Not at all," said Bill, shuffling towards her.

"Oh dear, no," said the woman, still suffering from an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Before Bill had reached the spot where Clytie was standing she had darted out into the hall and thence into the street, almost flying down the steps by which the house was approached.

Fortunately, there was a policeman in the street; policemen and cabs were continually hovering about Wilton Crescent. The officer stopped Clytie in her flight, and the women who had appeared at the different windows at the advent of the pretty country girl were now increased by scores; and as if they had sprung from the earth, Clytie found herself surrounded by a crowd of men and boys. She was covered with shame and confusion to find herself in such a position. The policeman was an experienced officer. He saw at once that she was a lady; he saw the situation immediately in a light favourable to her. His knowledge of female character gained in a special society at once placed Clytie far away from the women who were straining their eyes from twenty windows "at the girl who has run out of No. 1 and is talking to the policeman!"

"I have made some dreadful mistake, sir; pray let me go; I am thankful that you were here," said Clytie.

"Yes," said the policeman, "such as you have no business in this street."

"No, I am much obliged to you," said Clytie, turning alternately hot and cold.

"Don't be afraid, miss; you are a lady, I can see; I will walk a little way with you; can I direct you anywhere?" "You are very kind," said Clytie.

What were you doing in there?"

"I saw Apartments' in the window and went to inquire about them."

"Oh," said the officer, "thought it was a respectable house?"

"Yes," said Clytie.

"Lucky for you that you got out of it again so quickly," said the officer; "did they insult you?"

"No, I was afraid, and I ran out."

"Well, miss, if I can do anything, say the word."

"I am alone in London and am seeking lodgings; I did not know it was so difficult.”

"Be off, you ragamuffins," said the officer, turning suddenly round upon the crowd; "come with me, miss; I think I can help you."

The officer walked respectfully by the side of Clytie; the scores of eyes at the windows followed them, as did also a score of legs, in spite of the policeman's threats. The little crowd wended its way along the road called Regent's Park North, to that pretty park entrance known as the North Gate, where a little man in a brown livery and a gold-laced hat was switching his cane at a cloud of gnats that seemed to have taken a particular fancy to his hat. This was Johnny Breeze, a well-known park-keeper of that district, a fat, round, genial looking little P. K., as the children called him, whom no one feared, notwithstanding his cane and the tremendous passion into which he pretended to lash himself at every infantile breach of the park regulations. Johnny left the gnats to their gyrations when the policeman beckoned to him, though the flies continued to dance round the P.K.'s gold-laced hat.

"Mr. Breeze," said the officer.
"Sir to you," replied Mr. Breeze.
"Drive these boys off."

Mr. Breeze made a dart at the group which hung after Clytie and the officer.

The boys were scattered like the gnats for a moment, but they closed up again, and stared at the officer, who, however, carefully noted down the ringleader for future operations.

"This young lady wants lodgings. She is a stranger here, and made the mistake of inquiring yonder, at No. 1."

The little park-keeper elevated his eyebrows.

"Speaking from a goodish experience, I should say as the young lady is all she appears to be-respectable, and a lady."

Clytie blushed, and looked at the little park-keeper. He touched his hat to her.

"I know your missis has rooms, and if you direct the young lady

to them I dessay Mrs. Breeze will hear what she's got to say; and so I leaves you. Good morning, miss."

Clytie had slipped half-a-crown from her purse, but she felt that it would be an insult to offer it to the policeman; and he went his way, having faithfully performed one of those multifarious duties of the streets which make the London police of greater social and general value than we are willing to admit when we come down upon them for some failure in thief-catching.

"Well, miss," said the little park-keeper, "my missis lives in St. Mark's Crescent. Go straight on, past Primrose 'Ill, turn to the left, and ask any person for St. Mark's Crescent, and you can't mistake it-No. 43, with a bill in the window, and two flower-pots by the door. If you explains what you want, and can satisfy Mrs. Breeze --why, there aint a kinder soul going, though I says it. And with four children, and me only getting a guinea a week, why, the rooms is of importance, or I'd never have took such an expensive house; but there, it's done, and it cost us all the money me and my old gal 'ad saved, though she weren't an old gal then, as you can imagine."

"I go straight along the road?" said Clytie, anxious to move. “Yes,” said Mr. Breeze, touching his hat again, and pointing out the way with his stick; "straight as you can go, No. 43, St. Mark's Crescent. You can't miss it. Turn to the left, ask any one, and say as Mr. Robinson, the policeman, recommended you; that's the best way, and it will be all right. I dessay you'll tell Mrs. Breeze who your friends are, and all that, and I'm sure she'll make you comfortable. Straight as you can go, past the 'Ill, turn to the left, then inquire. Good morning, miss."

He touched his hat once more, and then, having dismissed the lady, he turned savagely round upon the gnats and switched them into half a dozen gyrating clouds; but they soon joined their hosts together again, and with a notable exercise of that instinct which many people deny to man they sailed higher in the air, out of the park-keeper's reach, and oscillated steadily up and down in the sunshine, undisturbed except by an occasional martin or swallow which had business with them.

Worlds within worlds! What a strangely marvellous creation is this around us! May not the gnats and the swallows be taken as typical of the London streets? The instinct which carried the living cloud beyond the line of the attacking switch is not strong enough to protect it from the swallow. While we sometimes take infinite pains to elude small annoyances, we offer no defence-we have none to offer-against the great calamities of life.

CHAPTER XIV.

GOOD SAMARITANS.

JOHNNY BREEZE had been so full of wonder all day that the children in the park feared he was ill. He forgot to switch the air and pretend to run after them with savage demonstrations. The P. K. was thinking about his wife's new lodger, thinking of her pretty innocent face, wondering if Mrs. Breeze would make her one of the family, or what she would do. Women have often notions about pretty young girls that differ with masculine opinions. Johnny hoped she would take to this stranger, and he hoped the result would be satisfactory. He had a daughter of his own growing up, and this excited his special interest in young people of every class, apart from the professional feeling which his calling as a P. K. gave him.

It was therefore a gratifying circumstance to Johnny when he reached home that the wife of his bosom was just sitting down to tea with the young lady and the eldest Miss Breeze and Master Harry, who were all eyes and ears.

"I said you'd be here punctual, Johnny, as you always are, thank goodness," said Mrs. Breeze, giving the P. K. a conjugal smack on the cheek. "The tea is just ready. Now, Henry, take your arms off the table; and Lotty, I'm surprised you cannot keep your fingers out of the sugar-and in presence of a lady too."

"Don't mind me," said Clytie, with a smile.

Number 43, St. Mark's Crescent, had seen Clytie's first smile since she left Dunelm.

"But we do mind you, my dear young lady, we do mind you. Don't we, Johnny ?" said Mrs. Breeze, cutting bread and butter with all her might.

"Certainly, my dear," said the P. K., hanging up his hat. "You found the way, miss; I suppose Primrose 'Ill guided you. It's a good landmark. I've bin a thinking of you all day, and a wondering if you'd be here."

"Oh, thank you," said Clytie, more pleased than she could express at finding herself an object of interest and sympathy with these honest people.

"We had such a talk," said Mrs. Breeze, pouring out the tea, and frowning Master Harry's elbows off the table; "such a talk; and if we can afford it, we are going to have a piano, and Miss—but she will not tell me her name at present-will teach Lotty to play."

Miss Lotty blushed at the picture of herself sitting at the piano, and the P. K., passing the bread and butter and watercresses to

Clytie, looked proudly upon the company and said: “Ah, that will

be fine."

Mrs. Breeze was a rosy, comfortable looking woman, with a round face and bright dark eyes; a sort of representative type of the lower middle class of Englishwoman; the kind of woman who is sure to wear a large shawl out of doors, and a little one pinned round her neck at home; a brown haired, healthy-looking woman, ready to do anything to keep a home together: to scrub, and wash, and cook, and let lodgings, and have a smiling face for her husband at night. Of course she was taller, and bigger, and stronger than her husband. She was the daughter of a Surrey dairyman, and he was the servant of a gentleman, through whose interest he had obtained the appointment of a keeper of Regent's Park. A guinea a week was not much, as Mrs. Breeze said, but it was a certainty, and clothes to the good made it worth a few shillings more, and it would be very hard if she could not make it up to a reasonable sum out of her lodgings; for three hundred and fifty pounds spent on furniture, and paying fifty-five pounds a year rent, must somehow be made to bring in a fair percentage, not to mention having milk free and a few useful presents now and then from the Surrey dairy.

"Miss Mary—that is all we are going to call her at present," went on Mrs. Breeze, chattering over the tea and smiling pleasantly on Clytie all the time-" she has been telling me all her history, and there, I'm sure-well, if it does not beat a book I never read one; and I never knew my heart warm to any one, rich or poor, old or young, as was not good and true; and I'm sure if she were my own—well, I could not feel more interest in her."

"Ah, you always was a kind-hearted soul, as your father used allers to say when I was coming down after you to the Dairy, 'Maggie'll never turn no milk sour;' and true it was."

"I don't know for that," said Mrs. Breeze. "I have my bit of temper, like other people, and if I'd only the power to make it felt, wouldn't I clean out some o' them gilded dens of infamy as deceives people and looks honest when it is the ashes on the lips in that St. John's Wood. But Queen Victoria don't take the interest she used to in having respectable women about, and no wonder she's grieved as she is for Prince Albert. Well, he was handsome, that's true; but I'm wandering from what I was saying. Where was I, Johnny?" "Down at the Dairy, Maggie," said the P. K. promptly.

"No, you were there," said Mrs. Breeze.

"Yes, father said as you didn't turn the milk sour. Ah, ah, ah !" burst in Master Harry, who had been devouring the conversation and bread and butter with an intense relish.