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'Then can't you persuade them?'

'But, my dear young lady, have you thought what is to become of them in the meantime?'

'Why, live somewhere else! People in Smokeland were always shifting about.'

'Yes-those poor little town tenements are generally let on short terms and are numerous enough. But here- where are the vacant cottages for your four families? Hodd with his five children, Tibbins with eight or nine, Mrs. West and her widow daughter and three children, and the Porters with a bedridden father?'

'They are dreadfully overcrowded. Is there really no place?'

'Probably not nearer than those trumpery new tenements at Bonchamp. That would be eight miles to be tramped to the men's work, and the Wests would lose the washing and charing that maintains them.'

'Then do you think it can never be done? See how nice my plans are!'

'Oh yes! very pretty drawings, but you don't allow much outlet.'

'I thought you had allotments, and that they would do, and I mean to get rid of the pig-sties.'

'A most unpopular proceeding, I warn you.'

'There's nothing more unsanitary than a pig-sty.'

'That depends on how it is kept. And may I ask, do you mean also to dispense with staircases?'

'Oh! I forgot. But do you really mean to say that I can never carry out my improvements, and that these people must live all herded together till everybody is dead?'

'Not quite that,' said the Admiral, laughing; 'but most improvements require patience and a little experience of the temper and habits of the people. There are cottages worse than these. I think two of them have four rooms, and the Wests and Porters do not require so much. If you built one or two elsewhere, and moved the people into them, or waited for a vacant one, you might carry out some of your plans-gradually.'

'And my fountain?'

'I am not quite sure, but I am afraid your cottages are on that stratum where you could not bring the water without great expense.'

Arthurine controlled herself enough for a civil 'Good-morning!' but she shed tears as she walked home and told her pitying mother that she was thwarted on every side, and that nobody could comprehend her.

The meetings for German reading were, however, contrived chiefly-little as Arthurine guessed it-by the influence of Bessie Merrifield. The two Greville girls and Mr. Doyle's sister, together with the doctor's young wife, two damsels from the next parish, and a friend or two that the Arthurets had made at Bonchamp, formed an imposing circle-to begin.

'Oh, not on Wilhelm Tell!' cried Arthurine. 'It might as well be the alphabet at once.'

However, the difficulties in the way of books, and consideration for general incompetency, reduced her to Wilhelm Tell, and she began with a lecture first on Schiller, and then upon Switzerland, and on the legend; but when Bessie Merrifield put in a word of such history and criticisms as were not in the High School Manual, she was sure everything else must be wrong-'Fraülein Blümenbach never said so, and she was an admirable German scholar.'

Miss Doyle went so far as to declare she should not go again to see Bessie Merrifield so silenced, sitting by after the first saying nothing, but only with a little laugh in her eyes.

'But,' said Bessie, 'it is such fun to see any person having it so entirely her own way-like Macaulay, so cock-sure of everything-and to see those Bonchamp girls-Mytton is their name-so entirely adoring her.'

'I am sorry she has taken up with those Myttons,' said Miss Doyle.

'So am I,' answered Susan.

'You too, Susie!' exclaimed Bessie-'you, who never have a word to say against any one!'

'I daresay they are very good girls,' said Susan; 'but they are-'

'Underbred,' put in Miss Doyle in the pause. 'And how they flatter!'

'I think the raptures are genuine gush,' said Bessie; 'but that is so much the worse for Arthurine. Is there any positive harm in the family beyond the second-rate tone?'

'It was while you were away,' said Susan; 'but their father somehow behaved very ill about old Colonel Mytton's will-at least papa thought so, and never wished us to visit them.'

'He was thought to have used unfair influence on the old gentleman,' said Miss Doyle; 'but the daughters are so young that probably they had no part in it. Only it gives a general distrust of the family; and the sons are certainly very undesirable young men.'

'It is unlucky,' said Bessie, 'that we can do nothing but inflict a course of snubbing, in contrast with a course of admiration.'

'I am sure I don't want to snub her,' said good-natured Susan. 'Only when she does want to do such queer things, how can it be helped?'

It was quite true, Mrs. and Miss Arthuret had been duly called upon and invited about by the neighbourhood; but it was a scanty one, and they had not wealth and position enough to compensate for the girl's self-assertion and literary pretensions. It was not a superior or intellectual society, and, as the Rockstone Merrifields laughingly declared, it was fifty years behindhand, and where Bessie Merrifield, for the sake of the old stock and her meek bearing of her success-nay, her total ignoring of her literary honours-would be accepted. Arthurine, half her age, and a newcomer, was disliked for the pretensions which her mother innocently pressed on the world. Simplicity and complacency were taken for arrogance, and the mother and daughter were kept upon formal terms of civility by all but the Merrifields, who were driven into discussion and opposition by the young lady's attempts at reformations in the parish.

It was the less wonder that they made friends where their intimacy was sought and appreciated. There was nothing underbred about themselves; both were ladies ingrain, though Arthurine was abrupt and sometimes obtrusive, but they had not lived a life such as to render them sensitive to the lack of fine edges in others, and were quite ready to be courted by those who gave the meed of appreciation that both regarded as Arthurine's just portion.

Mr. Mytton had been in India, and had come back to look after an old relation; to whom he and his wife had paid assiduous attention, and had been so rewarded as to excite the suspicion and displeasure of the rest of the family. The prize had not been a great one, and the prosperity of the family was further diminished by the continual failures of the ne'er-do-well sons, so that they had to make the best of the dull, respectable old house they had inherited, in the dull, respectable old street of the dull, respectable old town. Daisy and Pansy Mytton were, however, bright girls, and to them Arthurine Arthuret was a sort of realised dream of romance, raised suddenly to the pinnacle of all to which they had ever durst aspire.

After meeting her at a great omnium gatherum garden party, the acquaintance flourished. Arthurine was delighted to give the intense pleasure that the freedom of a country visit afforded to the sisters, and found in them the contemporaries her girl nature had missed.

They were not stupid, though they had been poorly educated, and were quite willing to be instructed by her and to read all she told them. In fact, she was their idol, and a very gracious one. Deeply did they sympathise in all her sufferings from the impediments cast in her way at Stokesley.

Indeed, the ladies there did not meet her so often on their own ground for some time, and were principally disturbed by reports of her doings at Bonchamp, where she played at cricket, and at hockey, gave a course of lectures on physiology, presided at a fancy-dress bazaar for the schools as Lady Jane Grey, and was on two or three committees. She travelled by preference on her tricycle, though she had a carriage, chiefly for the sake of her mother, who was still in a state of fervent admiration, even though perhaps a little worried at times by being hurried past her sober paces.

The next shock that descended on Stokesley was that, in great indignation, a cousin sent the Merrifields one of those American magazines which are read and contributed to by a large proportion of English. It contained an article called 'The Bide-as-we-bes and parish of Stick-stodge-cum-Cadgerley,' and written with the same sort of clever, flippant irony as the description of the mixed company in the boarding-house on the Lago Maggiore.

There was the parish embowered, or rather choked, in trees, the orderly mechanical routine, the perfect self- satisfaction of all parties, and their imperviousness to progress,-the two squires, one a fox-hunter, the other a general reposing on his laurels,-the school where everything was subordinated to learning to behave oneself lowly and reverently to all one's betters, and to do one's duty in that state of life to which it has pleased Heaven to call one,-the horror at her tricycle, the impossibility of improvement, the predilection for