"I SUPPOSE," said Richard Cable to his mother, "that she would not live in our old cottage? Not if I offered it her rent free?"

"The cottage is mine, Richard, not yours. Perhaps from me she would take it, but not from you."

"Then you may offer it her." He had his hands in his pockets; he drew them sharply forth and began to hum a tuneit was the mermaid's song from "Oberon." When he thought of her that tune came up with the thought. "Mother," he said, breaking off in the midst of the tune, now that we are in this house, we are in a different position, and the little girls must be suited to it. I've heard them talking just like the St. Kerian children. with a Cornish twang, and I won't have it. They must have better schooling than they can get at the national school."

"Will you send them away?" asked Mrs. Cable in dismay, as her heart failed her at the thought of parting with her grandchildren.

No; they must not leave home; they must learn better here, They should be able to play on the piano, and to sing, and read French, and know something of all those concerns which young ladies are expected to be acquainted with."

"What! Are you going to bring a governess into the house to them?" asked Mrs. Cable, with dismay almost equal to the first at the prospect of parting with the children.

"No; I'll have no stranger here," he answered.

"Then, how are they to learn? "Is there no one in the village who could teach them? I do not mean that they should be ignorant, or know no more than the laborers' children, because they will have money, and if they marry, they shall marry well."

"There is a long time to that," said Mrs. Cable.

"Who can teach them?" asked Richard.

"There is but one person who can do this," she answered, after a pause.

"She must be well paid for her trouble. You must arrange all that. Only, I will

not have this teacher come here; the children must go to her. Pay her what you like, and take her, whoever she may be. I do not ask her name; I want to know nothing about her; but if she teaches them, I will not have her too free with them; she must undertake not to kiss them, and coax them to love her. Do not tell me who she is; I do not want to know. I leave all that to you, but I make my stipulations beforehand."

"You mean this, Richard?

"I leave it to you. I ask no questions. I want no names named. If the children are to learn the piano, this lady who is to teach them must have one on which they may be taught. I will order one at Launceston to be sent to the cottage." "Very well, Richard."

"I have hit on a great idea," said he with a sudden change of tone. "There is always a trouble about feeding the calves with the hand. I have ordered at Bridgewater a lot of stone bottles, like those for ginger beer, but as large as foot-warmers for bed. And I've had a board put along each side of the calves' van, with holes in it, into which the bottles can be fitted. And then, mother, I've had tubes and nipples made for the bottles; and I pass these in to the calves through the bars, and they can all suck comfortably as they ride along. I might take a patent for it, I fancy, if I chose."

"But, Richard, to go back to the subject

He interrupted her hastily. "I'm going to engage a boy; and when we come to a hill, he'll walk round the van, and if any of the calves, which are as weak in their intellects as babies, let the nipples out of their mouths, which they may do through the joggling of the van when the roads are fresh stoned, or they may do it out of sheer stupidity- then, I say, the boy will put them back in their mouths again, and fill up the bottles with skimmilk at our halting-places. I've always found the calves get very much pulled down by a journey, and now, with this contrivance, I reckon they will be very much pulled up.'

"But about the girls?"

"I'm going to work on a grander scale altogether, and have a set of vans. I'm quite sure I can carry on the business wholesale, and with this idea of the calves' sucking-bottles carried out into execution, I must succeed."

There was no getting anything more out of him relative to the education of the children. He was apparently now en

grossed in the perfecting of his arrangements for feeding the calves out of bottles. "It is wearing and exhausting to the hand,' he said. "It gets like that of a washerwoman who uses soda all cockled and soft, what with being in the milk and in the calves' mouths. I've tried the buttend of the driving-whip, but it don't draw up milk, and the calves don't like the taste of the brass mount; so I've had to come back to the hand again. It is possible they may object to the vulcanized india-rubber at first, whilst it is fresh." Then, abruptly he reverted to what he had spoken of before. "Don't let her think that there's any favor shown in letting her have the cottage. It is done to suit my convenience. Last night, as I sat in my summer-house, I could see down into the village; and, I suppose to annoy me, she had her lamp burning till late, and there is not a wall or a tree between the post-office and my garden, so that the light of her lamp shone right up in at my door, and sit how I would, I could not get away from it. It aggravated me, and I know I shall get no pleasure out of my summer-house like that. By day, she'll do something to annoy me if she has that window, perhaps put red geraniums in it."

"But, Richard - it is a mile away."

"I don't know what the distance is; it aggravates and provokes me past endurance. I shan't be able to sit there of a day, because of the pelargoniums; nor at night, because of her lamp. I shall have to move the summer-house, and the expense and trouble of that the having masons and carpenters and painters about the place again, will be so vexing, that I'd rather she went into our old cottage. It would be best for me, and she'd save money herself, for I don't mind the rent, as it is an accommodation to me. I couldn't move the summer-house under ten pounds."

"And with regard to the matter of the children

"There is no favor there, either," interrupted Richard; "and I beg you will let her understand that. I want them instructed, and there is no one here but the young ladies at the parsonage and herself fit to teach them; and you can ask the former to undertake the task; if they refuse, then you can offer it to the other one; she gets the job only because there is no one else available. Let her understand that. And mind, tell her, if I send a piano there I mean, to the cottage. it is not that I give it her or lend it her; it is for my daughters to practise on; but

I don't object to her playing on it at any other time, because I've always heard that a piano ought to be played on continually to keep it in tune. It would go badly out of tune if it were only used for the children's schooling, and that would spoil their ear. Also," continued Cable," there are some sticks of furniture, and some bedding and other stuff, and some crockery down there, which must be used to keep the damp out of them and the moth and the wood-worm. There's no room up here for all these things, and they don't suit this new house; they are left down there to accommodate me; and if she does not pay rent, it is because we find it convenient to put some one in to keep the cottage dry, the mildew out of the furniture, and the moths from the bedding, and to keep the crockery from being chipped. Make her understand that; and if she spoils things, she'll have to pay damages. I do not know that I shan't put some more things into the cottage just to run the chance of their being injured by her, and so deduct the cost of the things spoiled from her wages." Then without looking at his mother to see what she thought of his ideas, whether relating to the feeding. bottles for his calves or the education of his children, he went down into the valley to his old cob cottage.

He had put the key in a secret place a hole in the thatch, that none but he knew of. He opened the door and went in and locked himself in. The cottage was in the same condition in which it had been left. The stools were round the poor little table, the armchair by the fire, and the ashes of the peat white on the hearth. Then he took off his coat, and went into the back kitchen and fetched a broom and a pail and a pan, and set to work to clean the house. He did not return to Red Windows all day. He was busy at the cottage. He scrubbed the floors and the little stairs; he brushed down the walls; then he got whiting at the grocer's and whitewashed ceiling and walls. He cleaned up the hearth and laid fresh kindling-wood on it, and hung a ket tle to the crook over it. He paid repeated visits to the shop that day, and bought glazed calico and tacks and chintz and muslin; and he nailed up curtains to the windows and put blinds where there were none

"lest," as he said to himself, "the lamp should shine out of these windows and torment me." Afterwards he got a spade and dug up and tidied the garden. He did not desist from his self-imposed task till late at night, not till everything

was done to his satisfaction. He was a man who loved tidiness. Next morning early, he left St. Kerian. This time he went to Bewdley, where he had to bestow some cattle he had contracted to bring to the farmers on the home farm of the

manor.

When he came to the inn, he found Mr. Polkinghorn there, who sprang up and saluted him with urbanity. "How are we ? " asked the footman; "bobbish or not? And how is the missus?"

"I am well," answered Cable gravely. He passed over the second query.

"You haven't come in your travels yet on the manor of Polkinghorn, have you?" inquired the flunky. "Because, if we could hit on that, there'd be some chance of our recovering the title-deeds, and being reinstated in our manorial rights. Butyou see - till we know where it is, the Polkinghorns can take no step."

"News? I've heard nothing.' "Not of our appointment to a bishopric?"

"You! No, certainly."

Yes, we are."

"What? The old lady?"

"Not exactly; but her brother-in-law, old Sellwood. I know him well; he's a nice old shaver. He's going to be a bishop down your way, at Bodmin. That is in Cornwall, is it not?”

"Yes. look at the papers." 66 Yes; he'll be bishop. I don't know that we care much about it. You see, the families of Sellwood and Otterbourne don't need it. They've lots of money, and a twopenny-ha'penny bishopric ain't much to them; especially a new affair, such as this. Why, I don't believe there's even a cathedral there, not a dean and chapter; and - I wouldn't take a bishopric myself where there wasn't a dean and chapter to sit upon. If you don't sit upon somebody, you're nobody. It isn't a man's headpiece that gives him estimation; it is his capacity elsewhere for sitting upon people. What is it that makes Mr. Vickary so much respected in our place? It is, that he sits upon us all. If he only sat on the button-boy, would he be held in such high honor? I put it to you, as a man of the world."

He to be bishop! I do not

Cable made no reply.

"He came here after you took her away. He didn't appear whilst she was in our place. He's a gentleman, you know, and

I

suppose disapproved of her being in a situation; though, for the matter of that, I'm a Polkinghorn, and I'm in a situation. What a Polkinghorn can do, a Cable may." "Never mind about that; go on."

"Some folks have vulgar objections to situations. If they do object to them, they're not gentlemen; as I take it, it is low."

"What has Mr. Cornellis done?" "Done! You should ask what is he going to do."

"Then I do ask that. He has not been to see his daughter where she is now."

"Oh, I don't fancy he's particularly interested about her. I fancy she was made the excuse for his first coming here, and making our old girl's acquaintance. He's been here off and on a good deal since a great deal too much for the liking of some of us; and if Miss Otterbourne had taken our opinion, she'd have sent him about his business long ago. I beg pardon, if I offend. He is your father-inlaw."

"You do not offend at all."

"It was a bit of a come-down his girl marrying you, no doubt, and he cut her off and disowned her for it; but he seemed mighty interested about her after she was

of Alboni. There, you feel at once the enthusiasm is for the voice; here, there is, within the admiration of the voice, a touch of personal affection for one who was, to him, like nothing before or since in the whole world. It is of this unparalleled personal fascination of which I would speak in this paper. The records of her career, at the time of her death in November, told enough of her musical achievements. But those of us who have enjoyed the peculiar privilege of her friendship in later years, cannot but be eager to express our sense of the force and nobility of her character.

Her character! There was the secret of the bewildering fascination of her early singing. Those of us who knew, and watched, and loved her long after the marvellous voice had utterly fed, could yet perfectly understand why the charm she once exercised had been so unique. As we felt the impressive vigor, the brilliancy, the high purity of the full-formed character, we could not be surprised at anything men told us of her wonderful effect upon them, when all this inward force, which still delighted us, had been felt at work within the heart of the clear, liquid, birdlike voice of a young girl.

For, indeed, her character had all the notes of greatness.

First, it had the gift of originality. How can I explain or justify a term which is used just to express what is indescribable? Those who knew her will perfectly understand me when I say that everything she did, everything she said, every gesture, every motion, bore her own individual stamp upon it. As she came into the room, as she went out, as she spoke, you felt in presence of an original nature, made in a fresh_mould, distinct, marked, unmistakable. I cannot recall a single conventional look or act of hers not one in which she was not herself alone. Her greeting, her way of coming forward with her hands outspread to welcome you, the pose of her head, the touch of dramatic action in all she did - how vivid is the impression left! Her image stands out, imprinted in clear outlines; it never mixes itself up with other memories. And she had the unaccountableness of an original genius; you never knew beforehand how she would take a thing, what she would say, how she would like it. She awoke that peculiar interest which belongs to those whose whole being is a surprise to you something which baffles your normal expectations; you cannot

to wait on it, and learn from it what its ways and motions will be. So with her. I never felt more sure that I was in the company of a genius than when with her. Every phrase of hers told; her foreign English broke out into all sorts of strange and abrupt and suggestive forms, which must have been a surprise to our native mother-tongue, but which gave it unexpected force.

And, then, her character bore the type of a great artist. She was an artist through and through. This is what you felt in her conceptions and treatment of music. She had the artistic ideality, the sense of an absolute and ideal perfection of workmanship, which was worth all effort and all toil, and by which alone the life's work was to be tried. She had the artist's sense of the all-sufficiency and the sanc tity of the ideal; the artist's scorn for all that compromised it, for all work that was not carried to its highest attainable projection,- for all weak shifts, and unskilled presumptions. And in all this she had the backing of her husband, for whose character she had an enthusiastic admiration-himself a musician of most pure and delicate taste, fastidious of all that, at all, falls a hair's breadth below the highest standard attainable.

This ideality was felt throughout her whole treatment of life. It made her judg ment of all untrained efforts, that bore the stamp of the amateur upon them, to be severe and alarming. She could shut her lips fast in a damning silence, after anything which failed to win her approval, in a way that made you feel that all was over, and that acquittal had become hopeless. She was not a person to whose criticism an aspiring amateur would like to offer his earlier efforts; though when she saw genuine merit, she would delightedly give most generous help. But the material must be good that you brought her; and the standard was very high. I think this is what her pupils would say at the Royal College of Music, to whom she gave such splendid work in the last years of her life. They loved her; and her training was magnificent in its serious and radical thoroughness; but she required much of them. She kept them as close to their scales as Mr. Ruskin kept his drawing class to the curves of a snail-shell. She believed as thoroughly as the Duke of Wellington that everything lay in the firm mastery of the primary elements of your task. Yet, with this intense belief in real "grind," she had the teacher's