SMILING youth and wasted age stood gazing at each other for a moment. The girl's cheeks were flushed; bright happiness danced in her eyes. She came like a sunbeam into the room; joyous light and life irradiated from her.

She was a picture of neatness and prettiness; she was dressed in a pretty-coloured stuff dress, and a piece of blue ribbon round her neck, to which a locket was attached, gave the slightest suspicion of coquettishness to her appearance. She held a candlestick in her hand, but the candle in it was not lighted. Although she stood still for a brief space, gazing at the old man, her thoughts were not upon him. There was a listening look in her face, and as she raised her hand she murmured, 'I wonder! I wonder!' and said aloud, in soft tones,

'May I look out of your window, daddy?'

Muzzy's window looked upon the street. Lizzie, not waiting for

VOL. XI.

permission, went to the window, and looked out, and stood there in silence so long, that Muzzy shuffled to her side. He saw nothing, however, for the form which Lizzie had been watching was out of sight. If she had spoken her thoughts, the words would have been: 'The dear fellow! It does my heart good to see him linger about the house. I used to see that with Mary, and Mary used to watch through the blind.' (Here, to be faithful to her musings, would have come a laugh that was almost a whisper-like a ripple on a lakelike a gurgling stream dancing down a hill.) 'He turned back three times to look at the house. Now, if he had known that I was here, he wouldn't have gone away for a long while. How handsome he is!'

A deeper flush was in her cheek, and her eyes sparkled still more brightly, as with a happy sigh she turned from the window to Muzzy, who was standing by her side.

B

'You got my key, daddy?' she said.

'Yes, my dear, thank you.' 'Did you come home early?' 'At about ten o'clock, my dear.' 'Did you see any one? Did anybody ask for me?'

'Nobody asked of me, Liz. You expected somebody, then?'

'O, no; but I wish I had been at home.'

She dismissed the subject with a light shake of the head, and said, smiling,

'You've had company, daddy.' 'Yes, my dear,' he replied, with a wistful look at her pretty facea strangely jealous look, too, which seemed to imply that he would have been better pleased if she were a little less bright.

'Nice company?' she asked. 'A gentleman-one who has been kind to me.'

She nodded with conscious grace, and stood before the old man with an assertion of prettiness upon her which heightened the contrast between her graceful person and his unattractive form. Not that the contrast was in her mind; she did not think of it, but it would have been forced upon an observer.

'We heard you talking,' she said.

'You have had company also, Lizzie.'

'O, yes.' With a blush and a smile.

'We heard you talking, my dear.' 'I suppose we made a great noise; Some One talks very loud sometimes.'

'You did not make a noise, my dear, but we heard you. Lizzie,' he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, 'your candle was out when you came in.'

'It went out in the passage, daddy.'

'Or some one blew it out, Lizzie.'

'Yes; perhaps - Some One

'We have been to the theatre to-night,' she said; 'Some One and me. I should like to be an actress. I think I should have made a good one.'

She let her hair fall loose as she spoke, and put on an arch look to provoke a favourable verdict. Muzzy's hitherto dull mood brightened under her influence.

'What theatre did you go to, my dear ?'

To the Olympic. We saw Daisy Farm. Isn't it a pretty name? Now, one would fancy that everybody was happy at Daisy Farm, because of the name; but it wasn't so. They were all in trouble until the end of the play, and then something very unexpected happened, and everything came right. Is it so in real life?' 'I don't think so.'

'But it's nice in a play. I wonder how ever they can cram such a lot of things in a couple of hours; and it all seems so natural! There was one part that Some One didn't like; it was where a young man who had been doing wrong-stealing money from his master-robbed his own father (as we all thought he was), so that he could put the money back. Some One got regularly excited over it; but it turned out that the man he robbed wasn't his father, so that was all right. When that was shown and the young man got off, Some One clapped so, that every

body looked at him. He lost his sweetheart, though.' 'Who?'

'The young man in the play. As we were walking home, I said to Some One, "Supposing that was you, would you have liked to lose your sweetheart in that way?" He turned quite white at the idea, and he looked at me so strangely, and said, "But you wouldn't throw me off as that heartless girl did in the play, would you, Lizzie?" I said, "No; that I wouldn't." "Not even if I was as bad as that young fellow?" asked Some One, to try me. And then I said- -But you can guess what I said, daddy. I don't think I'm a changeable girl, like some. We were very happy afterwards, Some One and me.'

'Come and sit down, Lizzie,' said Muzzy; 'I want to talk to you.'

The girl obeyed, and as Muzzy did not immediately speak, she fell a-musing.

Sweet thoughts were hers evidently, for presently the laugh that was like music came from her, evoked by something pleasant that she had seen or heard in her fancies. The sound aroused her, and looking up she saw Muzzy holding out the flower he had brought home for her. 'For you, Liz.'

'O, thank you, dad.'

She held it up by the side of her hair to admire it, and asked how it looked there. Out of his full-hearted admiration of her pretty ways he had but one answer, of course. Then she placed it in the bosom of her dress, which was slightly open at the throat, and ast the leaves touched her fair skin, she looked down and smiled both on the flower and herself.

'Some One would be jealous,' she said, 'if he saw it there; especially after what he brought me to-night. Wait a minute; I'll show you.'

'It is very pretty, and I shall put it in water all by itself.'

She selected a flower from the bunch, and placed it in her bosom by the side of the other; then bent down until her lips touched it. 'You are fond of flowers, my dear.'

'I love everything that is bright. I like to bury my face in them, like this, and shut my eyes, and think. Such beautiful thoughts come!'

Suiting the action to the word, she buried her face in the flowers, and saw pictures of the future as she wished it to be. It was filled with sweet promise, as it nearly always is to youth. And if fulfilment never comes, the dreams bring happiness for the time.

'Try!' she said, raising her face and holding out the flowers to him.

To please her, he closed his eyes among the leaves. But the visions that came to his inner sense of sight were different from those she had seen. For her the future. For him the past. The clouds through which he looked were dark and sombre, and as glimpses of longforgotten times flashed through the clouds, he sighed as one might have sighed who, wandering for a generation through a strange country filled with discordant and feverish circumstance, finds himself suddenly in a place where all is hushed, and where the soft breeze brings to him the restful sound of sweet familiar bells. But the dark clouds soon rolled over these memories, blotting them out.

'Lizzie,' he said, 'suppose you