"Yes; four poor dear little orphans. "And all coming to your home?" "My mother will welcome them all." "Ahem! I wish you joy of your West Indian importation. My aunt must have been remarkably fond of her step-son!"

"On the contrary," replied Flora, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper, though the birds that twittered on the branches above them were the only living creatures near; poor John was never anything but a trial to mamma. He behaved very ill to her indeed, at the time when poor dear papa's affairs were settled; he wrote in so insolent a manner; he cost my precious mother such bitter tears when she had been already suffering so much, that no one but an angel, as she is, would ever have forgotten or forgiven his conduct. You do not know how I felt it," continued Flora, her colour rising at the recollection; "I could have better borne unkindness to myself, but insolence to my widowed mother was not to be endured! Yet, no sooner did we hear that John had died, leaving his family poorly provided for, than the heart and home of my mother were opened at once; no feeling was

left in her bosom but generous sympathy and compassion; and I believe that she will receive. the widow as warmly and tenderly as if she were her own cherished child."

"That is Christianity!" exclaimed Ada. "Ah! if profession and practice thus always went hand in hand,-if 'good people,' as they are called, were always really good, they would win a great deal more respect from the world than they do now, and have a great deal more influence in it besides ! But what I can't bear is, when people talk as though they believed themselves to be saints, and all the rest of the world sinners, and look as though they thought it wicked to smile or raise their voice above a whisper; and when you come really to know them, when you can glance a little behind the curtain, they are as selfish, and avaricious, and mean, and spiteful, as the veriest worldling in creation! This is what disgusts one, and inclines one to set down great profession at once as hypocrisy !"

"My mother says that it is more by our lives than by our lips that we should show what we are, and to whom we belong," was Flora's quiet reply.

CHAPTER II.

THE VILLAGE.

Now, charming as I find this mossy seat, and the waving boughs, and the lights and shadows, and the beautiful view before me, and, above all, the lovely companion beside me, it strikes my unpoetical mind," said Ada, “that if we sit longer here, we may find rheumatism added to other country delights."

"I

Flora sprang up at once from her seat. quite forgot that you were not a country lass like myself," she said; "as it must be almost tea-time now, perhaps we had better return home."

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Dinner at one, tea at six,—how deliciously old-fashioned and rural !"

"Would you object to return by the village? I wished to inquire for poor old Mrs. Arkwright?”

"Object! I am only too much delighted to go where there is anything stirring, be it only a baker's cart!"

"I think that some day, Ada, I must introduce you to some of my favourite poor people."

I must get up a little appropriate smalltalk first," laughed her cousin. "I should feel almost as much out of my element in a cottage as one of your plough-boys would do in a ball-room. I could neither speak of amusements, nor fashions, nor pictures, nor parties; I cannot imagine what one would say after the first 'good morning' and the usual observations on the weather."

"Oh! how diverting it would be," cried. Flora, with sudden animation, "to set you to teach a class at the school!"

"I'd make it a dancing class at once, and substitute graceful courtesies for the little short bob which always reminds me of Jack in the box; and the little boys should learn to make elegant bows, instead of pulling down their own heads by tugging at the fore-locks!"

"You would not be so hard upon the simple salutations of our little rustics, Ada, had you seen our village in the old time, when a bob or a bow was an unheard-of piece of polite

"It is a very pretty village," said Ada, as the picturesque row of white cottages opened on their view; the latticed windows glowing

bright in the sun's setting rays, the small neat gardens gay with many a flower; while in the fore-ground the church, of simple but graceful architecture, raised its glittering spire towards heaven.

"It was a very different place twelve years. ago," said Flora, "when my dear parents first came to reside here. There was not a church then within four miles, and the people here lived in a state of almost heathen darkness. The cottages were miserable hovels, I have heard, and seemed purposely contrived to keep out sun and air, and admit the snow and the rain. Half of the children had never been baptized, and ran about bare-foot and bareheaded, as dirty and as ignorant as the very pigs with which they associated! The only thriving establishments were the ale-houses, and the character of the place was altogether so bad that it was really dangerous to be out after dark."

"And what worked such a wonderful change?"

"Oh! everything was gradually done, by patience and untiring zeal and benevolence. My dear father expended much money, and