of Human Life,
containing a Further Account of Mrs Placid and her daughter Rachel. By
the Author of the Antidote._ What _does_ it all mean? 'Squire
Bustle'--'Miss Finakin'--'Uncle Jeremiah'--used people to read books
like this when grandfather was a little boy? It looks quite charming,
but I think we'll put it by for the present. What's this? Oh, a
daguerreotype, I suppose--an extraordinary-looking, smirking old
person in a great bonnet with large roses all round her face, and tied
with huge ribbons under her chin. Dear auntie, why don't you wear
bonnets like that? You _would_ look so sweet! Pamphlets--tracts--oh
dear, these are all dreadfully dry. What a mixture it all is, to be
sure. The things seem to have been shot in anyhow. Hullo--an album.
_Now_ we shall see. This is evidently of much later date than the other
treasures, though it is at the bottom of them all."

He dragged out an old, soiled, photographic album bound in purple
morocco, and all falling to pieces. It proved to contain family
portraits, none of them particularly attractive in themselves, but
interesting enough to Austin. He turned over the pages one by one,
slowly. Aunt Charlotte glanced curiously at them over her spectacles
from where she sat.

"I don't think I remember ever seeing that album," she said. "I wonder
whom it can have belonged to. Ah! I expect it must have been your
father's. Yes--there's a photograph of your Uncle Ernest, when he was
just of age. You never saw him, he went to Australia before you were
born. Those ladies I don't know. What a string of them there are, to
be sure. I suppose they were----"

"There she is!" cried Austin, suddenly bringing his hand down upon the
page. "That's my mother. I told you I should know her, didn't I?"

Aunt Charlotte jumped. "The very photograph!" she exclaimed. "I had no
idea there was a copy in existence. But how in the wide world did you
recognise it?"

Austin continued examining it for some seconds without replying. "I
don't think it quite does her justice," he said at last, thoughtfully.
"The position isn't well arranged. It makes the chin too small."

"Quite true!" assented Aunt Charlotte. "It's the way she's holding her
head." Then, with another start: "But how can you know that?"

"Because I saw her only the other day," said Austin.

For a moment Aunt Charlotte thought he was wool-gathering. He spoke in
such a perfectly calm, natural tone, that he might have been referring
to som