into skeleton jackets. When I come to a town, I throw a
handful of small silver coin into the middle of the first group of boys
I find in my path. The next time they see me coming they cry out
lustily, 'Off with your hats, boys: here comes the rich lady!' Off go
the tattered hats and caps, and my small coin pays for the compliment."

"Your plan is an expensive one," said Flora; "no wonder the boys regard
you with such favour."

"I never found money fail but in one instance," said Miss Wilhelmina
thoughtfully. "Mind, it is not to every one that I would communicate my
experience. People like to talk of themselves--to tell portions of
their history; it relieves their minds. There are very few to whom I
have ever told mine; but I think it will amuse you. The follies of
others are always entertaining.

"My father was Scotch--my mother Irish. The two nations don't amalgamate
very well together. The children of such an union are apt to inherit the
peculiar national failings of both. My father united to a love of
science a great deal of mechanical genius. He was a clever, prudent,
enterprising man, and amassed a large fortune. My mother I never
knew--she died when I was an infant. My father hired a good-natured,
easy kind of woman, to be nurse. She was a widow, without children, whom
he afterwards promoted to the head of his table. She was his third wife.
He had one son by his first marriage, who had been born in Scotland, and
adopted by a rich uncle. He afterwards got an appointment in India; and
I never saw him above half-a-dozen times in my life--and only when a
child. He was a handsome, proud man, very Scotch in all his words and
ways. We never took to one another. He thought me a spoilt,
disagreeable, pert child; and I considered him a cross, stern man; and
never could be induced to call him brother.

"I inherited a good property from my mother, which made me a very
independent little lady, in my own conceit. I knew, that the moment I
became of age, I was my own mistress. Perhaps it was this consciousness
of power which made me the queer being I am.

"My step-mother was very fond of me. She spoilt me shockingly--more than
most mothers indulge their brats. She always seemed to retain a sense of
the inferior position she had held. Not a common failing, by-the-by:
persons raised unexpectedly to wealth, from the lower class, generally
measure their presumption by their ignorance. She always treated me as a
superior. My fa