ther, no warm little places of fond
sunshine, and to go away from all this world's possibilities in that
sudden cruelty! It wrung my heart, the hardness of it all. But could I
really grieve, remembering how chill was the brief life, and
remembering, above all, the scheme that was to make of him, so helpless
and undefended, a spiritual outcast and foundling?

And since I saw his mother--I went yesterday, having first sacked
Henley of white flowers, heliotrope, and fragrant leaves--and found her
unshaken in composure, untouched by any sense of duty missed--since
then I think I have been only glad that the little soul has taken
flight.

Very white and peaceful he looked lying in his crib, and I heaped my
flowers all about him.

"How much you loved him!" Mrs. Malise said, as she stood beside me
looking at him.

"And how pretty and happy he looks! I wonder if he is happy--if he
_is_ anywhere?"

"Well, some time we shall know! And perhaps it is better for him as it
is. Often and often his father and I were perplexed as to what we ought
to do for him by and by. At any rate he's past our marring! And I hope
we shall have no more children to deal with--be responsible for."

Ronayne says I ought to add what I have only told him under my breath,
that it completes my sketch of this "advanced" woman, a mother despite
herself.

On leaving I said to her something as to where the boy would be buried.

"It is not quite settled," she replied, "but Kensal Green, I suppose.
We are both strong advocates of cremation, and wish so much that it
were a present possibility. If it were, and even a difficult one, we
should certainly bear our practical testimony to the more sanitary way
of disposing of our dead. But----"

"Heaven help you!" I interrupted; "and farewell!"

We dare not tell this to nurse, who, though she was the little fellow's
fast friend, cried out at the first news of his death:

"Oh, I am glad he is gone, the poor dear! But he was too good for them,
and I'm glad he didn't live to have his heart quite broken."

* * * * *

And so ends my going forth after new lights. I'm the richer for my
foray in two friends, and the certainty that, Bohemian as I am, I am
but a fossil too, and that nature fitted me exactly to my place in
making me only the contentedly obscure wife of an Irish member and your

Loving Lil.

S. F. HOPKINS.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.