it, oven if the parson had called a purpose to tell me of it; but now I've secd it-I have; and the Lord knew all about these chickens, and this Dot, when he heard that poor man saying "The Lord will provide.' Well, if people would only open their eyes, they'd have to open their mouth too. Ay, they do open it no doubt, but 'tis always to put something inseldom to bring out any praise, like our poor neighbour Patch. And if one goes into it," said Mrs. Taps, "this is downright mean to God, and it shan't be so with us any more.. Here's chickens provided now, and Dot the child provided for; and nobody knows what will come next." No-nobody did know, until it happened; and then, as is generally the case, every one knew. And what happened was this: It came to the ears of the gentleman whose little boys had been ill, what terrible mischief had been wrought by the negligence of their nurse. Right well he rowed her up; and right well did she deserve it, and twice as much more, if she had got it; for she had done what in her lay to rob a poor man of his health, and trade, and chil. dren's lives. care is too much to prevent the spread of infec tion. And 'tis a wicked thing, for our own ease, or to save a few shillings, or for the sake of two or three days' time, to bring misery on nobody knows how many." But Mr. Colthurst did more than blow up his nurse, he paid the tailor's doctor, and gave the family a handsome present beside; and moreover, being an army clothing contractor, he let John Patch have as much as he could do; until at last, he came to have twelve men under him, every one of "Patch sang tenor, and he sang bass." "You should do unto others as you would wish they would do to you; and how should you like any one to come, and just for want of a little thought and precaution, to infect our children with the small-pox, or anything else? You must make conscience, Mrs. Worsted, of these things; if every one did this, disease would not be travelling all over the country as it is now. Things have come to this, that one can't get into a railway carriage or a cab and be sure that he shan't catch something before he comes out of it, and all because of people's selfishness and want of thought, and a little care-a little indeed! Why, I say 'no them nearly twelve inches taller than -himself. So he flourished, and like Job, his latter end was better than the beginning. And Taps, the brewer's man, bought a hymnbook in course of time for himself; and he wore no clothes but what Patch made; and if he had his own way, he'd have had Patch make Mrs. Taps's clothes too; why shouldn't he? he couldn't make anything queerer for a woman, than what they made for themselves! And it became a serious question with him and his wife, as to whether Dot was not their own child, and it was all a mistake supposing that she belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Patch at all. The brewer's man sang no more at the publichouse-but loud and cheery his voice was heard in the house of God. Patch sang tenor, and he sang bass-and so the bag with the fever in it, which Mr. Taps once wished might be a bag of curses, was made the means of John Patch's prosperity to the end of his life, and the change in his neighbours' hearts and ways; and he and his tasted that joy often comes by sorrow; and that what seems to be for our ruin may be for our truest good; and that what we call a bag of curses, or of troubles, may, by honouring God, turn out in the end-"a Bag of Blessings." ALL "The three ladies left the room."-p. 466. CHAPTER XII.-A DINNER PARTY. LL freedom of family intercourse had vanished as want of air would stifle breathing lungs. Harry, inamong the Palmers. It was not that they deed, did fear Patricia's condemnation in the matter feared each other's condemnation, it was simply that of his engagement, though he was ready enough want of sympathy had stifled confidence, as surely to brave it, and he had hoped that Anne would rush VOL. V. 241 off and communicate, the tidings in the heat of the moment. Mr. Palmer had not spoken of it to his daughters. He had left Harry to tell them, and he waited for them to speak. The managing clerk had ventured to comment on Miss Chapelle's sudden disappearance, and his master had abruptly silenced him by saying, "Miss Chapelle is under my care, Mr. Simmins;" and he ordered the money for her maintenance to be transmitted through the man's hands. And it had come to be known over the factory that Nelly was one day to be Mr. Harry's wife, and that before it was known to Patricia. The first day of silence past, Anne had found her position grow more difficult with every hour. Patricia, in the same position, would have ended the difficulty by speaking out; it was Anne's morbid delicacy that kept her silent. If she could only bring Patricia and Harry together again, all would be well. He would tell her himself in their first half hour of confidential talk; but Harry and Patricia did not seem likely to come together; on the contrary, they seemed tacitly to avoid any occasion for doing so. This party seemed to Anne a perfect godsend, and she urged it on Patricia with more than usual urgency. And Patricia, though she saw through Anne's purpose perfectly, yielded. As yet her strong selfwill had not been sufficiently roused to resistance; she was rather inclined to make peace. So with very little protest she allowed Anne to write, accepting the invitation for both, at the unfashionably short notice of a single week. Things remained in the same position till the day of the dinner arrived, and Harry accompanied his sisters to Bloomsbury Square. When they got there, Mrs. Jobson was standing the centre of a group of men, while her husband stood on the hearth-rug amid a similar one. The men evidently admired Mrs. Jobson. She was in black again, for which she seemed to have a fancy. A rich skirt of black glacé swept the floor about her feet, a small, square-cut velvet boddice encased her pretty figure, with some rich lace round the throat; a single rose was in her hair. She was coqueting as a baby might coquetsmiling and opening her innocent blue eyes to their widest. What one could not help noticing about the men was their wonderful similarity. They might have been brothers, so much alike were they. They were not foolish-looking men; on the contrary, more than one face among them wore the impress of a certain kind of cleverness. They were manly men, if manliness consists in bone and muscle-bulk and proportion. They were all more or less inclined to be obese. In one or two the eyes "stood out with fatness;" it was a peculiar kind of animalism which made them look so much alike. And over and above this animalism, the same in kind as that which makes one fat ox resemble another at a cattle-show, Philistine was stamped on every face. These animals fed on that fat pasturage-the British public. They were men who had never produced anything tangible. Some of them had speculated pretty largely in the article shares; but in general these had proved little other than shares of loss and misfortune. In a word, they were mere speculators. Save the Palmers and their hostess, there were no other ladies of the party, and evidently the most distinguished of the male guests was told off to take Patricia in to dinner, while Mr. Jobson took Anne, and Harry offered his arm, as a matter of course, to Mrs. Jobson. The dinner was, upon the whole, execrable. The salmon was red-raw, the joint done to a cinder, the ingredients of the pudding were parting company. One or two pies looked successful, but the guests were too wary to try them. Mrs. Jobson, who seemed to reserve herself for the sweets, looked on with a composure which any hostess might have envied, and which a perfect success would alone have warranted; but the face of the host gathered blackness as he and his friends made attempts to eat. "This comes," he thought, "of dining at home, when one can get a first-rate dinner at a hotel for a guinea and a half a head.” As it was Mr. Jobson's practice to give his dinners at a hotel, Mrs. Jobson may be somewhat excnsed for her failure. There was no attempt at general conversation; but where two gentlemen were seated together there seemed to be abundant talk about business of one kind or another. Harry chatted away with the hostess about the merest nothings, while Mr. Jobson talked across Anne to her next neighbour, never addressing her, except on the subject of eatables, during the whole evening. Patricia seemed to be having the best of it, her neighbour looking even animated in discussion. The dessert was fine, and the guests applied themselves to peaches and pineapple with a zest unusual at the end of a feast. Mrs. Jobson eat three of the former and a large slice of the latter, and then she gave the signal to rise, and the three ladies left the room-a happy riddance, to judge from the hilarity which instantly followed their departure. "There!" said Mrs. Jobson, with a little laugh, as they reached' the drawing-room door, "I have often asked Dick to tell me what they get such fun about, but he won't. He's a regular old bear. Do you know they have a sort of bears' club? Your brother has just joined it." "Do you mean the gentlemen down-stairs ?" asked Patricia, with a look of undisguised displeasure, quite unnoticed by Mrs. Jobson as she settled herself in an easy chair. TWO YEARS. "Yes," she replied; "and they call themselves the Social Bears; and they have fines of champagne and brandy if they do not growl before every speech, and do so;" and she held her little plump hands before her in the manner of a bear's paws when it gets on its hind legs. 467 interesting even on commercial crises. Patricia, profoundly ignorant of men and things, thought she had never met a man so agreeable, so interesting. She marvelled to find him in what she could not help thinking, in spite of her lack of social experience, a bad set. He contrived to let her see that Anne burst out laughing. Patricia looked at her he felt himself above them. Then he was so frank with profound contempt. about himself. He acknowledged that he was poor, but that his foot was already on the first step of the ladder. He had had enemies who had hitherto impeded his progress. Patricia wondered that such a man should have such bitter enemies; for he more than once alluded to their machinations as diabolical. No doubt they were bad men whom he had opposed, and who had banded themselves together to keep him down. He named more than one great engineering work of which he would have been the head, but for such opposition. By the time he had succeeded in conveying all this to Patricia's mind (and he did it without appearance of egotism), the rest of the gentlemen had arrived on the scene, more than one of them, to Patricia's intense disgust, bearing witness to the rapid circulation of the decanters down-stairs. Anne looked anxiously at her brother as he appeared among them. He, too, had taken more than enough. His face was flushed; the veins of his hands were swollen, and his manner was slightly excited. "I wish we had never come among these people," she thought, as she looked from one to the other of the faces round her. Anne had turned away to hide her agitation, and was standing over one of the huge illustrated books which lay on the table, with trembling fingers, when, to her infinite relief, the waiter, who had been hired for the occasion, brought the ladies a cup of tea. His entrance broke off the dangerous conversation, and Anne took care that it was not resumed. Her sister wondered at her almost in silence; for her usual good sense seemed to have deserted her, and she talked feverishly on the most frivolous subjects. At length an end was put to the mental torture which Anne was undergoing by the appearance of a solitary gentleman. It was he who had sat next to Patricia who had appeared thus early, and, before he had uttered half-a-dozen sentences, managed to convey the hint that the proceedings in the dining-pleasant. The three drove home in absolute silence room below were not to his mind. He was a tall, well-made man of about thirty, with a rather swarthy complexion, though neither hair nor eyes were of the darkest. The eyes were brown, small, and bright as a bird's; the face was beardless; the forehead low, but broadish, and clouded with a mass of fine dark-brown hair. At first sight he was almost ugly, for the nose was thick and short, and the cheeks heavy; but you soon ceased to think so he threw such a glow of animation into his face that it made him appear positively handsome. For his manner, it was hardly simple enough to be really good; but it aimed at simplicity, mingled with something of the grand style; but that might have been to suit his company. He was evidently a man of education, and had been in so-called good society, as he took care incidentally to prove, quoting a well-known M.P. or two as my friend Mr. So-and-so, member for such and such. At first his talk was small and general; but before long he had engaged Patricia alone, and was enlarging on grave subjects, making himself Presently, Patricia's companion went up to Harry, and they talked together till the carriage came, and the evening was at an end. Mr. Eden, for that was his name, handed Patricia down, and bade her good night, with just sufficient empressement to be -Harry asleep in the corner, the sisters each occupied with her own thoughts. CHAPTER XIII. "PATRICIA, it is quite true!" said Anne; and she spoke with a sudden energy, as soon as she was alone with her sister, derived from the force she had put upon herself in keeping silence so long. "What is quite true, Anne ?" inquired Patricia. "You look half frightened." "It is quite true that Harry is engaged to be married,” replied Anne. Patricia was silent for a few minutes, then she asked with a forced calmness, which hurt poor Anne more than any passion, "When did it happen, may I ask?” "In the summer-time, while we were away, I believe," answered Anne, looking exactly as if she had been the guilty party. "And how long have you known this ?" was Patricia's next question, while her looks became more and more stony. "It is some time since I knew of it," replied Anne; "but I did not know until it was all arranged." Patricia turned away as if satisfied; but Anne rose, and, kneeling at her sister's feet, flung her arms round her waist and begged to be forgiven. "You look at me," she cried, "as if I was a stranger. Do forgive me, darling; I was so afraid of hurting you." "Of hurting me! I may retort that you have treated me as a stranger. Have I deserved to be treated thus ? Am I such a coward that I cannot face the truth; or such a tyrant that you dare not tell it ? If Harry is about to marry some person whom he is ashamed to introduce into his family, the sooner it is known the better; the sooner my father knows it the better." Patricia had gone off on an entirely wrong tack, and Anne made haste to bring her back. "Don't say that, dear," rejoined Anne, "you will be good friends yet; and I hope," she went on, with some degree of hesitation, "I hope we shall like his wife. She is the-the young lady who superintended the women over at the factory. Mr. Simmins told us about her, you remember, at the last Christmas party. We saw her, too, when we were over the works that very week." "I remember her," said Patricia, "only as a pale girl, in a black frock. I do not wonder now that Harry was ashamed of his choice; but my father——” "She was always a favourite of his," said Anne, "and I do not see why Harry should be ashamed of her. If I remember rightly, she had a great deal of beauty, of the unobtrusive sort, and she need not be vulgar because she is poor. Our father was a poor man's son," she added, with new-found frankness, "and was once a poor man himself." "He is fond of telling us so," said Patricia, "perhaps to keep down our pride; but I only judge others by myself, and think there can be no happiness in an unequal marriage; and I could not marry a man who was not my equal in everything." "That is because your pride is greater than your love—at least than any love you have ever felt yet," said Anne. "It may be," said Patricia with a sigh, and a softer expression than she had yet worn, and she thought of the stranger she had met that evening, "I have not told you yet who it is," she said, in a and how it would be if he was as high-born as he hesitating manner. "I do not think, after what has happened, it can matter much to me," replied Patricia, disengaging her unbending form from her sister's arms. "Patricia," said Anne, rising to her feet, “I may have made a mistake; but in your heart you know me well enough to feel sure that I would not have withheld the confidence from you if the story I had to tell had been my own. I wished you to hear it from Harry's own lips. Do not-do not let every one of us misunderstand and hold aloof from the other in this dreadful way. It is nothing but wicked pride that is keeping you and Harry apart. I do not think he would have taken the step he has taken if you had parted friends in the summer-time; and I feel sure that your estrangement will work more mischief yet." Anne had spoken her mind, and her mind was singularly clear when she did speak it, only she had never spoken so strongly and sternly to her sister before. It had the desired effect. Patricia's lip quivered. She held out her hand to Anne, drew her near to her, and kissed her forehead; then she pushed her back from her a little way and said, "We must be friends always, Anne; only you must never fail me in this way again. It was a great mistake of yours. You know I am always frank with you. As for Harry, I shall never feel the same to him again." was high-minded, and sought her for herself alone. Anne told her all she knew about Nelly, and then the sisters did as they used to do when they were little girls-laid their heads on the same pillow and sealed their friendship by sleeping in each other's arms. At last Anne slept; but half through the night Patricia lay awake quite still for fear of rousing the sleeper-like a mother who holds fast her slumbering child—but mentally tossed to and fro by a multitude of vexing thoughts. The pride and self-will which ran through the whole family, with the exception of Anne, were now thoroughly stirred. She could not forgive her brother. She would not be reconciled to him. Her highest qualities seemed arrayed on the side of this resolution. She was severely just, and it was no more than justice that he should feel that he had wronged her affection. She was thoroughly loyal, and he had been disloyal-they all had been-to her. They could, none of them, be the same to her again. Oh, the bitterness of it! She would feel alone among her own nearest kindred for ever. And it was so. nothing. Patricia must have all, and be all, or |