rovisions of
the settlement, in a first mortgage on land; and informing her that half
a year's interest at 4 12 per cent was due, which it was his duty to
pay into her own hand and no other person's; she would therefore oblige
him by receiving the inclosed check, and signing the inclosed receipt.

The receipt came back signed, and with it a few gentle lines, "hoping
that, in time, he would forgive her, and bestow on her what she needed
and valued more than money; her own brother's, her only brother's
affection."

On receiving this, his eyes were suddenly moist, and he actually
groaned. "A lady, every inch!" he said; "yet she has gone and married a
bricklayer."

Well, blood is thicker than water, and in a few years they were pretty
good friends again, though they saw but little of one another, meeting
only in Hillsborough, which Guy hated, and never drove into now without
what he called his antidotes: a Bible and a bottle of lavender-water. It
was his humor to read the one, and sprinkle the other, as soon as ever
he got within the circle of the smoky trades.

When Edith's little boy was nine years old, and much admired for his
quickness and love of learning, and of making walking-stick heads and
ladies' work-boxes, Mr. Little's prosperity received a severe check, and
through his own fault. He speculated largely in building villas, overdid
the market, and got crippled. He had contracts uncompleted, and was
liable to penalties; and at last saw himself the nominal possessor of a
brick wilderness, but on the verge of ruin for want of cash.

He tried every other resource first; but at last he came to his wife,
to borrow her L1900. The security he offered was a mortgage on twelve
carcasses, or houses the bare walls and roofs of which were built.

Mrs. Little wrote at once to Mr. Raby for her money.

Instead of lending the trust-money hastily, Raby submitted the proposal
to his solicitor, and that gentleman soon discovered the vaunted
security was a second mortgage, with interest overdue on the first; and
so he told Guy, who then merely remarked, "I expected as much. When had
a tradesman any sense of honor in money matters? This one would cheat
his very wife and child."

He declined the proposal, in two words, "Rotten security!"

Then Mr. James Little found another security that looked very plausible,
and primed his wife with arguments, and she implored Guy to call and
talk it over with them both.

He came that very