ment, at least."

"Does it really?" I exclaimed; for this was certainly not my
idea of a London life.

"Yes," she replied. "I get up every day at six o'clock; and,
after attending to some of my household concerns, I walk to
Church, at St. Margaret's, where there is a service every
morning. It feels almost like the country to walk at that
hour."

"You must have found it piercingly cold in the winter?"

"It was cold enough sometimes; but lately it has been so mild
that I walk slowly by the balconies to smell longer the
mignonette which fills them. After Church comes breakfast; and
then I go to the square."

"To walk there?"

"Yes; a kind of a walk."

"Alone?"

"Oh, no; I have plenty of companions--but never mind that. I
will tell it you all another time."

"No; tell it me now; it interests me so much."

"It will make you think me a child still, though we said I was
a woman just now. Well, then, first there are the birds,--the
black, starved, unhappy-looking London birds; you cannot think
how pleased they are with the seed and the crumbs which I take
them every morning. I have chosen a particular old thorn-tree
for our meeting-place; its leaves are beginning now to peep
out, and it will be a great day for the birds and me when its
white blossoms appear. As it is, they flock to it quick enough
when I come into the square, and seem almost to call to me to
make haste."

"You love them, Alice, as you used to love your Passion
Flower?"

"Not exactly; I loved my Passion Flower because it did me
good; my birds I love because I do _them_ good. But I have
greater friends than these in the square; friends that run to
me too when I come in--the darling children."

"How do you love _them_, Alice?"

"Oh, as God's own chosen ones, whose Angels behold his face in
Heaven. They seem so very _near_ Heaven. Will you come some
day into the square with me, Miss Middleton?"

"Call me Ellen, and I will go with you wherever you like."

"Well, then, dear Ellen, you must come and see those I love
best. There is one so like Johnny!" (her eyes filled with
tears as she said this) "only that he looks as if he belonged
to some noble race, like those that the verses talk about; and
another looks like the picture in my prayer-book of young
David going to fight Goliath. I am so happy with them that I
sometimes forget myself, and stay longer in the square than I
ought."

"Why, what have you to do afterwards?"

"Oh, then, it is