by some one who can appreciate the good he did among the poor, and carry on his plans. How much more painful would it have been if a red-faced, hunting, sporting clergyman had been sent to us, like the rector at Hexley!"

I dare say you are right, my dear," said her mother with a sigh.

Mr. Russell's character was in fact of a higher class than that of his amiable predecessor. With fewer shining quali ties than Mr. Wellford, he possessed greater grasp of mind. He had fewer accomplishments, less taking manners, but stronger sense. He appealed seldomer to the passions and more to the understanding. To one accustomed to the sunshiny hilarity of Mr. Wellford's countenance and manner, Mr. Russell, especially while still suffering from a domestic calamity, necessarily appeared grave and reserved. His disposition was excellent, yet where Mr. Wellford would have acted from the spontaneous impulse of the heart, Mr. Russell often acted from principle. Mr. Wellford's disposition was essentially social: he had no higher enjoyment than that of conversing with his wife, his children, and his parishoners. Mr. Russell had greater sources of happiness within himself. It sometimes cost him an effort to lay down a favourite author and visit a sick cottager; but the volume was always closed and the peasant always visited; and the consequent glow of self-approbation amply repaid the exertion of rousing himself from luxurious indolence.

Mrs. Parkinson, who had written more than one condoling letter to her sister, now re-urged her sending one of the girls to Park-Place. Mrs. Wellford's spirits became very low at the thought of parting with any of the dear members of her diminished circle, and she long endured all the discomfort of irresolution; but recalling to mind her last conversation with her husband to whose sentiments and wishes she now attached a species of sacredness, she at length made up her mind to part with her little Rosina, and wrote the tardy answer to her sister's invitation. With fond self-deception, she avoided fixing any specific time, taking advantage of such phrases as "the next opportunity," "a trusty escort," &c.; but Mr. and Mrs. Good being summoned to London by the death of a relation that very week, they offered to deposite the little girl at Stock Barton in their way, and the proposal was too unexceptionable to be refused. The suddenness of the resolution prevented much time for regret: Rosina was in high spirits to the last moment, and it was not till the windows were

drawn up and the stage whisked through Summerfield, that the luckless little damsel began to roar at the top of her lungs.

Without minutely describing the adventures of a heroine in her eighth year, during the course of a forty miles' progress over a Macadamised road, it may be necessary to state that the evening of the same day saw her safely consigned to a powdered footman at the lodge of Park-Place. Rosina, with silent awe accompanied him to the house, beneath the portico of which stood a middle-aged gentleman who honoured her with a kiss, saying "So you are my little niece, are you? I am sure you seem a very nice little maid." Thence she was conducted to the drawing-room, where sat Mrs. Parkinson, and old Mrs. Diana. She was welcomed by the former with a delight such as a child might display at the acquirement of a new toy.

"And how is your mamma, love?" cried the lady, untying her niece's bonnet-" Lord, what a fine child! do look at her, aunt Diana."

Rosina was indeed well worth looking at. Her auburn locks, let them be combed or brushed which way they might, persisted in resolving themselves into spiral ringlets; her large laughing eyes were brilliant hazel, and her cheeks of the colour and softness of a peach. Mrs. Parkinson smothered her with kisses, and Mrs. Diana observed that she was "an uncommon fine child indeed."

"This evening, every body was pleasant and pleased. The next was not quite so agreeable. Rosina had been noisy all day, and in the afternoon had enticed her uncle to swing her in the garden. Mrs. Parkinson fretful at being deprived of a plaything of which she was nevertheless already becoming tired, summoned them in-doors: they returned in high spirits and renewed the romp in the drawing-room, and then she began to be jealous that Rosina, whom she had got for herself, should so visibly prefer the company of the gentleman. "She declared she could bear such a noise no longer, so Miss Rosina was sent to bed.

After she was gone, Mr. Parkinson sat down, took up a newspaper which he had read before, and commenced the following dialogue with his wife.

"Well my dear, how did Mr. Curtis find you to-day?" "He said, Mr. Parkinson, that I've a great deal of feverish heat about me, and am far from well."

"So far well. I am glad to hear it."

'Glad to hear, what, Mr. Parkinson ?" (raising her voice and speaking distinctly,)" He says I'm far from well." "Oh, far from well-that alters the case; I'm sorry

hear it."

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I don't think you care much about it."

to

What a sturdy little thing that Rosina is! it is astonishing what strength she puts out."

"That's no answer, Mr. Parkinson, to my observation." "What observation, my dear? I did not hear you make any."

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No, I dare say not. Such a fine uproar as you have been making ever since tea! It would be just the same, I dare say, if I were dead."

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Deaf, my dear? no such thing."

"Dear me, Mr. Parkinson, who said you were, I said dead, not deaf."

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Oh! was it so? my dear, I am thinking that if you took as much pains to pronounce your consonants as your vowels, I should hear you perfectly well. You have got into rather an indistinct way of speaking, the last year or two."

To lay the fault of your hardness of

hearing to my articulation !"

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My dear, I hear Rosina perfectly well."

"Yes, because she halloos."

"It does not appear so to me."

"Because you're deaf!"

"I'm sure her voice went through my head this evening,"

observed Mrs. Diana.

"Oh, and mine too. She's very lovely, certainly, but no one would take her for a gentleman's child. It will be the ruin of her if we continue to let her go on as she has done to-day. I must endeavour to bring her into some sort of order."

This was spoken in Mrs. Parkinson's ordinary tone of voice; and drawing her chair towards Mrs. Diana, she left her husband to enjoy his deafness and his newspaper together.

Should not you call on Mrs. Pennington soon?” said Mrs. Diana.

"Yes, I think I ought, though I've a good mind to punish her for her abominable haughty independent manner, by staying away a little longer. What a terrible large family that is! To be sure the Doctor has a handsome income, but I can hardly imagine how he will provide for them all."

"Oh! the eldest son and daughter are settled.”

"Yes, but then there are the two next girls nearly ready to come out, who most likely will not marry so well as Mrs. Ponsonby. Then there are Lewis and Marianne. I'm sure their father would do much better to send them to good schools than to bring them up at home, for they are very noisy, unformed young people. But there's so much talk of their superior education; and, when one goes there, one hears so much about experiments and air pumps and electrical machines, that it makes one quite sick, There did not

It was

use to be any of this nonsense when I was a girl. but last week the Doctor let them send up a fire balloon. I told him I thought it was very dangerous."

"Ah, they'll repent it some of these days," said Mrs. Diana.

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So I say," rejoined Mrs. Parkinson.

“But, dear me, did you hear Mr. Curtis's story of Major Webster, that used to dine here in my father's time, dropping down dead? It was very shocking, really. He was not older than Mr. Parkinson, and much the same sort of looking man, of a full habit and florid complexion. I should not be surprised at his going off in the same way some of these days, for he has a great many of the symptoms Mr. Curtis mentioned, and so I said to Mr. Curtis; and he said if any thing of that kind should ever occur, the best thing would be

66

For him to marry my widow," said Mr. Parkinson in his usual quiet voice.

"La! Mr. Parkinson," cried his wife, looking vexed and confused, "who would have thought of your hearing what we were talking about ?"

"What you were talking about, my dear, you mean; for I did not perceive aunt Diana's lips in motion."

"Well, all I know, is," said Mrs. Parkinson, "that it's very disagreeable to live with a person that sometimes is deaf and sometimes is not."

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'My dear, the fault is not in my deafness, which is never so great as you will persist in maintaining it is, but in your having got such a habit of speaking in a shrill key that you don't know when you are making use of it."

"I speak in a shrill key? Why, not long ago, you accused me of muttering."

"Only of speaking indistinctly, my love, which prevents my benefiting by your agreeable conversation, and then you fancy I am deaf."

B*

"Well, there really is no pleasing you, one way or the other," cried Mrs. Parkinson very crossly, and retreating with a bed candlestick as she spoke; "I think, deaf or not deaf, you are enough to tire the patience of Job!"

CHAPTER IV.

ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE.

THERE being no necessity for minutely tracing little Rosina Wellford's history during her abode at Park-Place, it need merely be stated that Mrs. Parkinson soon discovered her grievous mistake in supposing she could learn to be fond of children, and that the system of management pursued by her was such as to have a ruinous effect on her protegée's temper and happiness. Injudicious indulgence was shortly followed by injudicious severity, or rather by a course of petty thwartings and teasings as difficult to bear as the tyrannical exercise of power on a larger scale. One circumstance, indeed, meliorated Rosina's fate. Mrs. Parkinson, flimsily educated and without taste or talent for communicating or acquiring knowledge, was ill qualified to teach her charge more than she knew already; and a temporary illness induced her to accept Mrs. Pennington's friendly proposal that the little girl should be sent to the rectory every morning to take her lessons with Lewis and Marianne. Mrs. Pennington made the offer, in fact, more in compassion to the niece than the aunt; but Mrs. Parkinson found herself so much the gainer by three hours' daily quiet, that though she jealously commanded Rosina to return the instant lessons were over, she allowed the plan to be pursued after the ostensible motive for its adoption had ceased, satisfying her pride and her conscience by the reflection that it was no great favour from the Penningtons after all, as Mr. Wellford had been the Doctor's second cousin. Rosina regularly poured forth her woes in confidence to her sympathizing young companions, who deeply resented her wrongs, and looked upon Mrs. Parkinson as the greatest tyrant that ever lived. Commiseration, however, though it alleviated, could not heal her childish griefs; as she increased in years and understanding,