"Gordon, I am sorry to learn how unruly you have been to-day, don't let me hear any more complaints," and then he quietly went up stairs to his wife.

This was not exactly what Barbara wanted, but she was already learning to be content with far less than she wanted. It was odious only to have earned the reputation of making complaints, but it could not be helped.

She looked back that night on a hard, but not very satisfactory, day's work; the past could not be mended, but the future was still her own, and Barbara heartily resolved to meet the exigencies of the next day more good-humouredly and forbearingly, though not a whit less firmly.

With Barbara, this review of her day was but rare; with Elizabeth, it was daily, but this habit did but make it a longer and more perplexing business this night. She saw, now Barbara was in Hetty's place, her own position must soon become very different from that which it had formerly been. With Hetty, she had had no greater duties than those of being attentive in school hours, and good-humoured and obliging out of them. Now Barbara seemed likely to require a far more active service; and how one so sensitive and retiring shrank from the thoughts of greater prominence and activity only those of like temperament can realize. She had already vexed and disappointed Barbara, could she do better another day? For months she had always gone scrupulously to her own room to read and pray as soon as Miss Barnard had left them, a habit she had seen recommended in "Laneton Parsonage." This was a duty to GOD, could she ever put it aside now to please Barbara? If such a habit were not continued day by day, at one stated time, she had always read that it soon ceased to be a habit at all. It was already often irksome to her, was it not her own wickedness made her now half inclined to think that to follow Barbara's wishes might be the greater duty?

She had no one to ask, no one to whom to turn, no

good uncle, no well-known clergyman. There are hundreds of young girls like Elizabeth Wynne, longing earnestly to do right, distrusting their own judgment, but having no one to advise them in the many difficulties which their tender, scrupulous consciences are ever raising in their way. Elizabeth thought and thought. She could not bear to act contrary to Barbara's expressed wish, to run any risk of seeming illnatured or selfish, or add to the chances of her sister or brothers getting into trouble; but if she gave up keeping to herself the quarter of an hour immediately following Miss Barnard's departure, she saw she could never reckon on again having so much time to herself before the afternoon's lessons were over. Surely the duty to GOD must be the greater, all must give way to that, and so with tears in her eyes she resolved at all risks to persist always, and at all costs, in her old

habit.

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Almost every earnest, anxious-hearted girl of sixteen would have done the same, but not the less surely Elizabeth was mistaken in making an unbending rule! She might have no clergyman friend, no good uncle, to whom to turn for the solution of her difficulty, but in the great Order-Book of every soldier of CHRIST, she would have found many a direction to help her to decide otherwise, and for her guidance in many a like trial,—“ Bear ye one another's burdens," "As much as in you lies, live peaceably with all men,' mercy and not sacrifice," and even texts more exactly apply. ing to her trouble. It must now happen that sometimes when she was asking grace for the day's duties, she should instead have been amongst her brothers and sisters, actively fulfilling them. And would not a prayer in her heart, while she cleared the schoolroom after her governess had left her, have been, when more was impracticable, equally acceptable to One, Who would have known that it came from an honest and good heart,—as the many she must now at times be uttering to enable her to perform conscientiously

the little duties which she was at that very moment neglecting?

Perhaps she had never heard those sensible lines which have awakened the eyes of many to the real place of rules:

"Make rules, and keep them if you make them;

But fret not if compelled to break them:

To be a slave to any rule,

Is making master of your tool!"

CHAPTER V.

"But now, alas! the place seems changed;
Thou art no longer here:

Part of the sunshine of the scene
With thee did disappear."

LONGFELLOW.

THE next morning, to the surprise of all, Mrs. Wynne was down to breakfast as early as any of her children her cheek a shade whiter, her features every now and then contracting as with a sudden passing pain, but otherwise as bright and well as she ever was. Suddenly she caught sight of the great green and yellow bruise now disfiguring Gordon's forehead.

"My dear boy, what have you done to yourself?" she asked.

"Will did it," began Gordon piteously; "he" "Well, never mind now," answered Mrs. Wynne, we can hear about it afterwards."

Which Barbara knew meant that their father was not to be troubled with the narration.

She felt somewhat anxious for Will, for their mother especially discountenanced every approach to a practical joke; and even such an idle trick as this had been, she was sure Mrs. Wynne would not let pass. Honest-hearted Will waited about the hall after Harvey and David had started for school to the last minute, thinking (indeed hoping, for he hated to have anything hanging over his head) that Gordon would be asked for his complaint and himself blamed, if he were to be blamed, at once. However the last minute,

from which he could reach the grammar school even by running the whole way, came, and he was forced to start without a word having been said.

The dining-room was gradually cleared of all but Mrs. Wynne and Barbara.

"Where is Gordon? if you see him tell him I am ready for him."

"Oh, mamma, you will let me take his lessons!” "No thank you, I am quite well enough. I shall be in the parlour. Perhaps you will find him, and tell him to come in a quarter of an hour."

Barbara went, rather disappointed at discovering that her mother meant to be up and about again during the whole of the day. She was anxious to retrieve the mistakes and discomfitures of yesterday; however, to use her favourite expression, it could not be helped, so she must turn her energies into some other directions.

She found Gordon,-not in the kitchen this time, -and then loitered in the hall, thinking what she should do, and here first awoke to the full consciousness of how terribly she did and should miss Hetty. What was the pleasure of taking Göthe and a dictionary into the drawing-room now there was no one to linger about, abusing her for being so studious, and doing all she could to distract her?

However Barbara's was not a nature to sit still and weep, or even to "sit upon a mossy stone and sigh where none can hear," but to be up and doing; so she bravely fetched her books from the schoolroom, for sociability's sake settling herself in the further window-seat of the parlour; and if she every now and then heaved a sigh for a light step and gay voice, without which all the world seemed dreary, it was inwardly not outwardly.

Presently Gordon came in.

"You must bring your books here, my boy," said Mrs. Wynne from her sofa.

"Oh, mamma," said Barbara looking up, "I ought