ments, and that they would do, and I mean to
get rid of the pig-sties.'

'A most unpopular proceeding, I warn you.'

'There's nothing more unsanitary than a pig-sty.'

'That depends on how it is kept. And may I ask, do you mean also to
dispense with staircases?'

'Oh! I forgot. But do you really mean to say that I can never
carry out my improvements, and that these people must live all
herded together till everybody is dead?'

'Not quite that,' said the Admiral, laughing; 'but most improvements
require patience and a little experience of the temper and habits of
the people. There are cottages worse than these. I think two of
them have four rooms, and the Wests and Porters do not require so
much. If you built one or two elsewhere, and moved the people into
them, or waited for a vacant one, you might carry out some of your
plans--gradually.'

'And my fountain?'

'I am not quite sure, but I am afraid your cottages are on that
stratum where you could not bring the water without great expense.'

Arthurine controlled herself enough for a civil 'Good-morning!' but
she shed tears as she walked home and told her pitying mother that
she was thwarted on every side, and that nobody could comprehend
her.

The meetings for German reading were, however, contrived chiefly--
little as Arthurine guessed it--by the influence of Bessie
Merrifield. The two Greville girls and Mr. Doyle's sister, together
with the doctor's young wife, two damsels from the next parish, and
a friend or two that the Arthurets had made at Bonchamp, formed an
imposing circle--to begin.

'Oh, not on WILHELM TELL!' cried Arthurine. 'It might as well be
the alphabet at once.'

However, the difficulties in the way of books, and consideration for
general incompetency, reduced her to WILHELM TELL, and she began
with a lecture first on Schiller, and then upon Switzerland, and on
the legend; but when Bessie Merrifield put in a word of such history
and criticisms as were not in the High School Manual, she was sure
everything else must be wrong--'Fraulein Blumenbach never said so,
and she was an admirable German scholar.'

Miss Doyle went so far as to declare she should not go again to see
Bessie Merrifield so silenced, sitting by after the first saying
nothing, but only with a little laugh in her eyes.

'But,' said Bessie, 'it is such fun to see any person having it so
entirely her own way--like Macaulay, so cock-sure of everything--and
to see th