cket-handkerchief. When a
domestic performed an errand for honest Laura, she was always thankful
and pleased; whereas she could not but perceive that the little Muse had
not the slightest scruple in giving her commands to all the world round
about her, and in disturbing anybody's ease or comfort, in order to
administer to her own. It was Laura's first experience in friendship;
and it pained the kind creature's heart to be obliged to give up as
delusions, one by one, those charms and brilliant qualities in which
her fancy had dressed her new friend, and to find that the fascinating
little fairy was but a mortal, and not a very amiable mortal after
all. What generous person is there that has not been so deceived in his
time?--what person, perhaps, that has not so disappointed others in his
turn?

After the scene with little Frank, in which that refractory son and heir
of the house of Clavering had received the compliments in French and
English, and the accompanying box on the ear from his sister, Miss
Laura who had plenty of humour, could not help calling to mind some very
touching and tender verses which the Muse had read to her out of Mes
Larmes, and which began, "My pretty baby brother, may angels guard thy
rest," in which the Muse, after complimenting the baby upon the station
in life which it was about to occupy, and contrasting it with her own
lonely condition, vowed nevertheless that the angel boy would never
enjoy such affection as hers was, or find in the false world before him
anything so constant and tender as a sister's heart. "It may be," the
forlorn one said, "it may be, you will slight it, my pretty baby sweet,
You will spurn me from your bosom, I'll cling around your feet! O let
me, let me, love you! the world will prove to you As false as 'tis to
others, but I am ever true." And behold the Muse was boxing the darling
brother's ears instead of kneeling at his feet, and giving Miss Laura
her first lesson in the Cynical philosophy--not quite her first,
however,--something like this selfishness and waywardness, something
like this contrast between practice and poetry, between grand versified
aspirations and everyday life, she had witnessed at home in the person
of our young friend Mr. Pen.

But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed natural somehow
that he should be self-willed and should have his own way. And under his
waywardness and selfishness, indeed there was a kind and generous heart.
O it