Helen was really much to be pitied, it was such a grievous change in her circumstances. At first she hoped that Mrs. Lawrence, living so near, would continue to take kind notice of her, and had she remained at the Grange, probably she would have done so, but here was another disappointment; it had been Mrs. Lawrence's wish that her son and daughter-in-law would come and live with her, but they reversed the case, and persuaded her to take up her abode with them; and three weeks after the double marriage, she removed to her new home, and the Grange was let to strangers.

Before her final departure, she called to see and take leave of Helen, and brought her, what was very acceptable, a supply of pocket-money; she was in a hurry, and could only stay a short time, and Miss Baker, of whom Helen stood much in awe, being present all the time, she could but thank her without saying half that was in her heart, while she strove in vain to restrain her tears. It was a sad day for Helen when this last of her old friends quitted the neighbourhood.

CHAPTER IV.

"The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

"My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the (happier) past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary."
LONGFELLOW.

We will pass over the first half year at school, and go with Helen to spend the Christmas holidays in her father's house at Stenham. She was now just entering her seventeenth year, ladylike in her appearance, and well informed and accomplished for her age. It was with difficulty she concealed her distaste for the parlour behind the shop, it looked into a little back yard, dingy with the smoke from the neighbouring chimneys; the smell of the grocery disgusted her, and, used as she had been from

the time she was four years old, to the pure atmosphere of the country, she might be excused an occasional lamentation over the want of fresh air. Much of all this had to be adroitly concealed from her father; he had been well content that she should remain at the Grange, and had made up his mind that she was provided for, and, while things went well with her, he made no objection to what he called her dainty ways-indeed, he had been rather proud of her; but it was different now, and he had more than once uttered words to the effect that he wanted no fine ladies in his house, her sister Jane was worth twenty of her.

"Now do, my dear Helen," said Mrs. Lester to her on Christmas Eve, "come and help me stone the plums for the pudding, I want to be able to tell your father you had a hand in it."

"You know, mother dear, I shall only hinder you, and if I do not work hard, I shall not finish my purse to-night, and I want so to give it to father to-morrow morning."

"To be sure, dear, never mind then, I will do it all myself, for Jane is off to help dress the church."

The purse was not received very graciously when Helen presented it the next morning. Mr. Lester thanked her, it was pretty enough, he said, though not nearly so useful as his leather one, and he should be better pleased if she would

earn some money to put in it. The words were certainly by no means the most unkind that he had addressed to her since she had been at home, but they cut her more keenly, for she had really thought she should for once succeed in pleasing him; he was going out of the room as he spoke, and Mrs. Lester was taken by surprise, when Helen bursting into tears, threw her arms round her neck.

"Oh, mother dear, I wish I had never left you, we might have been all so happy together, and now Jane and Willie do not care for me, and father is always angry with me. Oh! I wish I had never left you," she repeated, sobbing.

"Don't say that, my darling, though for that matter, I wish you never had, but I thought it would be a fine thing for you, and your father thought so too, and when I wanted, after two months, to ask to have you back, dear, he would not let me."

"Oh, how I wish he had! though I was very happy there for a long time; but that is no good

now.

"What vexes me is, that they should give you all this learning, so that you cannot be comfortable living with us, no blame to you, dear; and now they leave you to shift for yourself, and perhaps have a harder life than if they had never taken you up."

"I like to learn, and they used to be very

good to me, but Miss Lawrence could not have been so fond of me as I thought she was, and Mrs. Lawrence who made so much of me too! As for Miss Harriet, she never seemed to care much about me, but I think she was the most sorry for me when I was sent away."

"She was always worth more than her sister, though I loved them both, and poor Miss Edith, too."

"Mrs. Greaves promised to write to me, and she told me to write to her, and I did, telling her all about myself as I used to do, and she wrote two such short, cold letters. I do not believe she cares about me now."

"She has something else to think about, I hope she will never wish she had remained as she was; 'marry in haste, and repent at leisure,' is a true saying sometimes, and she knew little enough of Mr. Greaves."

"I never liked Mr. Greaves, I suppose it was not very likely I should."

"There's a many people besides you that did not like him, dear."

"I can just remember," said Helen, with a sigh, reverting to the cause of her present trouble," how I used to run out to meet father, and how he would take me in his arms, and kiss me, and how proud I was when he let me go with him to the farm; surely he was very fond of me then, mother.'