ast a foot high, and brandishes a forbidding sceptre. All
this is seen from the front, but the rear view discloses the fact that
the lady terminates in the tail of a fish which wriggles artistically
in mid-air and is of a brittle sort, as it has evidently been thrice
broken and glued together.

Mrs. Bruce did not leave us long in suspense, but obligingly came out,
partly to comment on the low price of mutton and partly to tell the
tale of the mammoth mermaid. By rights, of course, Mrs. Bruce's
husband should have been the gallant captain of a bark which foundered
at sea and sent every man to his grave on the ocean bed. The ship's
figurehead should have been discovered by some miracle, brought to the
sorrowing widow, and set up in the garden in eternal remembrance of
the dear departed. This was the story in my mind, but as a matter of
fact the rude effigy was wrought by Mrs. Bruce's father for a ship to
be called the Sea Queen, but by some mischance, ship and figurehead
never came together, and the old wood-carver left it to his daughter,
in lieu of other property. It has not been wholly unproductive, Mrs.
Bruce fancies, for the casual passers-by, like those who came to scoff
and remained to pray, go into the shop to ask questions about the Sea
Queen and buy chops out of courtesy and gratitude.

* * * * *

On our way to the bakery, which is a daily walk with us, we always
glance at a little cot in a grassy lane just off the fore street. In
one half of this humble dwelling Mrs. Davidson keeps a slender stock
of shop-worn articles,--pins, needles, threads, sealing-wax, pencils,
and sweeties for the children, all disposed attractively upon a single
shelf behind the window.

Across the passage, close to the other window, sits day after day an
old woman of eighty-six summers who has lost her kinship with the
present and gone back to dwell forever in the past. A small table
stands in front of her rush-bottomed chair, the old family Bible rests
on it, and in front of the Bible are always four tiny dolls, with
which the trembling old fingers play from morning till night. They are
cheap, common little puppets, but she robes and disrobes them with
tenderest care. They are put to bed upon the Bible, take their walks
along its time-worn pages, are married on it, buried on it, and the
direst punishment they ever receive is to be removed from its sacred
covers and temporarily hidden beneat