he charities
we owe to each other, I should deny my faith if I could say yes. I shall
not, madam, confuse the end of your connection with him with the end of
your training in him, even if he runs away, or fancy that I see the one
because I see the other. I do not pretend to know how much evil he
inherits from his forefathers as accurately as our graphic friend; but I
do know that he has a Father whose image is also to be found in His
children--not quite effaced in any of them--and whose care of this one
will last when yours, madam, may seem to have been in vain."

As the little ladies rushed forward and each shook a hand of the parson,
he felt some compunction for his speech.

"I fear I am encouraging you in grave indiscretion," said he. "But,
indeed, my dear ladies, I am quite against your project, for you do not
realize the anxieties and disappointments that are before you, I am
sure. The child will give you infinite trouble. I think he will run
away. And yet I cannot in good conscience say that I believe love's
labour must be lost. He may return to the woods and wilds; but I hope he
will carry something with him."

"Did the reverend gentleman mean Miss Betty's teaspoons?" asked the
lawyer, stroking his long chin, when he was told what the parson had
said.

BABYHOOD.--PRETTY FLOWERS.--THE ROSE-COLOURED TULIPS.

The matter of the baby's cap disturbed the little ladies. It seemed so
like the beginning of a fulfilment of the lawyer's croakings.

Miss Kitty had made it. She had never seen a baby without a cap before,
and the sight was unusual if not indecent. But Miss Kitty was a quick
needlewoman, and when the new cap was fairly tied over the thick crop of
silky black hair, the baby looked so much less like Puck, and so much
more like the rest of the baby world, that it was quite a relief.

Miss Kitty's feelings may therefore be imagined when, going to the baby
just after the parson's departure, she found him in open rebellion
against his cap. It had been tied on whilst he was asleep, and his eyes
were no sooner open than he commenced the attack. He pulled with one
little brown hand and tugged with the other; he dragged a rosette over
his nose and got the frills into his eyes; he worried it as a puppy
worries your handkerchief if you tie it around its face and tell it to
"look like a grandmother." At last the strings gave way, and he cast it
triumphantly out of the clothes-basket which served him for cradle.