enly, as they longed to do.

"Did you ever hear the like of that, Gentleman Jan?"

"Or see? I used to say no one could hold a candle to our Grace but she--
she looked like a born queen all the time!"

"Well, she belongs to us, too, so we've a right to be proud of her. Why,
here's our Grace all the while!"

True enough; Grace had been standing among the crowd all the while,
rapt, like them, her eyes fixed on Valencia, and full, too, of tears.
They had been called up first by the melody itself, and then, by a chain
of thought peculiar to Grace, by the faces round her.

"Ah! if Grace had been here!" cried one, "we'd have had her dra'ed off
in the midst of the children."

"Ah! that would ha' been as nat'ral as life!"

"Silence, you!" says Gentleman Jan, who generally feels a mission to
teach the rest of the quay good manners, "'Tis the gentleman's pleasure
to settle who he'll dra' off, and not wer'n."

To which abnormal possessive pronoun, Claude rejoined,--

"Not a bit! whatever you like. I could not have a better figure for the
centre. I'll begin again."

"Oh, do come and sit among the children, Grace!" says Valencia.

"No, thank your ladyship."

Valencia began urging her; and many a voice round, old as well as young,
backed the entreaty.

"Excuse me, my lady," and she slipped into the crowd; but as she went
she spoke low, but clear enough to be heard by all: "No: it will be time
enough to flatter me, and ask for my picture, when you do what I tell
you--what God tells you!"

"What's that, then, Grace dear?"

"You know! I've asked you to save your own lives from cholera, and you
have not the common sense to do it. Let me go home and pray for you!"

There was an awkward silence among the men, till some fellow said,--

"She'm gone mad after that doctor, I think, with his muck-hunting
notions."

And Grace went home, to await the hour of afternoon school.

"What a face!" said Mellot.

"Is it not? Come and see her in her school, when the children go in at
two o'clock. Ah! there are Scoutbush and St. Pere."

"We are going to the school, my lord. Don't you think that, as patron of
things in general here, it would look well if you walked in, and
signified your full approbation of what you know nothing about?"

"So much so, that I was just on my way there with Campbell. But I must
just speak to that lime-burning fellow. He wants a new lease of the
kiln, and I suppose he must have it. At least, here he com