So, naturally, while I walk
With you, I feel a swell--and stalk--
Consecutively muttering "Oh,
I'm quite a man, I feel I grow."

But loudliest thumps this heart to-day,
While in the mud you pick your way,
(You fawn, you flower, you star, you gem,)
In your new boots with heels to them.

Your Eldest Slave.

"I don't consider these verses a bit more _consecutive_ than Conyngham's
talk," said John, laughing.

"Well, father, then he shouldn't say such things! He said Mr. Brandon
walked with an infallible stride, and that you were the most consecutive
of any one he had ever met with."

"But, my dear little girl, Crayshaw would not have known that unless
you had told him; do you think that was the right thing to do by a
guest?"

Gladys blushed. "But, father," said Barbara, "I suppose Cray may come
now; Conyngham goes to-morrow. Cray never feels so well as when he is
here."

"I had no intention of inviting him this Christmas," answered John.

"Well," said Gladys, "it doesn't make much difference; he and Johnnie
can be together just the same nearly all day, because his brother and
Mrs. Crayshaw are going to stay with the Brandons, and Cray is to come
too."

John felt as if the fates were against him.

"And his brother was so horribly vexed when he found that he hardly got
on at school at all."

"That's enough to vex any man. Cray should spend less time in writing
these verses of his."

"Yes, he wrote us word that his brother said so, and was extremely cross
and unpleasant, when he replied that this was genius, and must not be
repressed."

John, after this, rode into the town, and as he stopped his horse to pay
the turnpike, he was observed by the turnpike-keeper's wife to be
looking gloomy and abstracted; indeed, the gate was no sooner shut
behind him than he sighed, and said with a certain bitterness, "I
shouldn't wonder if, in two or three years time, I am driven to put my
neck under the yoke after all."

"No, we can't come," said little Hugh, when a few days after this Emily
and Dorothea drove over and invited the children to spend the day, "we
couldn't come on any account, because something very grand is going to
happen."

"Did you know," asked Anastasia, "that Johnnie had got into the
_shell_?"

"No, my sweet," said Emily, consoling her empty arms for their loss, and
appeasing her heart with a kiss.

"And father always said that some day he should c