y.

Isa has acquiesced with an overflow of gratitude and affection to
them for taking pity on her. It sounds a little fulsome, but I
believe some of it is genuine. She is really glad that some one
wishes for her, and I can quite believe that she will lose in Avice
all that made life congenial to her under Mary's brisk
uncompromising rule. If she can only learn to be true--true to
herself and to others--she will yet be a woman to love and esteem,
and at Birchwood they will do their best to show that religious
sentiment must be connected with Truth.

And so ends my study of the manners of my nieces, convincing me the
more that as the manners are, so is the man or woman. The heart, or
rather the soul, forms the manners, and they _ARE_ the man.

C. F.

COME TO HER KINGDOM

'Take care! Oh, take care!'

Whisk, swish, click, click, through the little crowd at Stokesley on
a fine April afternoon, of jocund children just let loose from
school, and mothers emerging from their meeting, collecting their
progeny after the fashion of old ewes with their lambs; Susan
Merrifield in a huge, carefully preserved brown mushroom hat, with a
big basket under one arm, and a roll of calico under the other; her
sister Elizabeth with a book in one hand, and a packet of ambulance
illustrations; the Vicar, Mr. Doyle, and his sister likewise loaded,
talking to them about the farmer's wedding of the morning, for which
the bells had been ringing fitfully all day, and had just burst out
again. Such was the scene, through which, like a flash, spun a
tricycle, from which a tiny curly-haired being in knickerbockers was
barely saved by his mother's seizing him by one arm.

'A tricycle!' exclaimed the Vicar.

'A woman! Oh!' cried Susan in horror, 'and she's stopping--at the
Gap. Oh!'

'My dear Susie, you must have seen ladies on tricycles before,'
whispered her sister.

'No, indeed, I am thankful to say I have not! If it should be Miss
Arthuret!' said Susan, with inexpressible tones in her voice.

'She was bowing right and left,' said the Vicar, a little
maliciously; 'depend upon it, she thought this was a welcome from
the rural population.'

'Hark! here's something coming.'

The Bonchamp fly came rattling up, loaded with luggage, and with a
quiet lady in black seated in it, which stopped at the same gate.

'The obedient mother, no doubt,' said Elizabeth. 'She looks like a
lady.'

There had been a good deal of excite