elf aside altogether in her meditations, and simply to rejoice with
those who rejoiced; but she had not attained this degree of
unselfishness; she could not help believing sometimes that she had
plucked all the thorns and none of the roses of life. But if you suppose
that she betrayed this yearning and pining to the world at large, you
are very much mistaken. As has been told, she had the right chord of
genuine nobility and generosity in her, and she laboured to fit her
cross to her own back, so that it might not overshadow and crush others.
Her fingers went nimbly about her gifts--trifling things, only enough to
gladden simple hearts. She gratified Miss Sandys by praising her rusty
accomplishments in cookery; she uttered a jest or two for the benefit of
Jenny and Menie, who had a liking for her, though they called her
"scornful;" and she brought in holly and box from the garden to decorate
the sitting-rooms. The last move, however, proved nearly a failure, for
there was one little pink and white blossom of laurustinus, which had
ventured out in a sheltered nook, though half of its leaves were
blanched ashen grey. It somehow or other raised such a tide of sentiment
in her as all but overcame her.

Miss West desired work for this season, and she got work, and tolerably
hard work too, for besides completing her New Year's gifts, she had to
help to entertain Captain and Mrs. Berwick.

The visitors were so vulgar, according to fine people, that they were
not even sensible of their own vulgarity. And so good-natured were they,
that they were not offended because cousin Sandys did not invite them
with any of the genteel parents of her pupils. They took this reserved
hospitality as a complimentary admission of their kinsmanship. But they
were not intrinsically more coarse-minded than many dukes and duchesses.
Captain Berwick, it is true, was nautical in his tone, and talked shop,
but that is permitted to sea captains in novels, nay, enjoined upon
them. He was apt to be broad in his jokes, and to use unwarrantable
expressions, for which he bent his shock head in penitent apology the
moment after he had used them. "It is the effect of bad habits, Kirsten
and Peggy," he would cry: "you women know nothing of bad habits any more
than of bad words."

Mrs. Berwick was a particularly round-eyed woman, and was plump and
ruddy where the Captain was battered and weather-beaten. She placed the
scene of most of her narratives in the kitc