impossible employment called 'eating his head off'; and then one day, when they least expected it, the crash came. The house of Woodford Brothers had failed.

Martha never knew all the particulars; but she was well aware that there were fraudulent and disgraceful dealings mixed up with it. Mr. Woodford's hands were clean, his honour unblemished-no man who knew him could distrust his integrity for a momentbut he had been deceived and cheated by a clerk. In some ways Mr. Woodford was an excellent man of business, but since his wife's death he had lost spirit and energy and his natural indolence had increased. He had always been prone to trust people, and no suspicion of his head clerk's nefarious practices had ever entered his head.

'Nicholson is the best man I ever had,' he would say boastingly to his friends. 'I would trust him to carry through any business, however difficult'; and yet it was this very Nicholson who ruined his master.

Mr. Woodford was a weak man-he had never faced any trouble yet-and the blow to his commercial pride was too much for him. That the Woodford name, his father's and grandfather's honoured name, should be bespattered with mud was a terrible thing in his eyes. 'Do well to thyself, and all men shall think well of thee,' had been his life-long motto. Poverty could be borne, but not disgrace.

One morning Mr. Woodford rose, after a sleepless night, to be in time for the early train, when the housemaid, startled by the sound of a heavy fall in the dressing-room, aroused Martha from her sleep. The girl flew down the passage; but the door was locked, and it was some little time before the butler could force his way in. They found Mr. Woodford lying insensible

on the floor-he had had a paralytic stroke. Medical aid was at once procured, but it was some time before he regained even partial consciousness, and for many weeks there was much cause for anxiety. From that day he was a broken man, and only the care and ministrations of his devoted daughters made his life bearable to him.

'And you had no one to help you?' asked Sheila, when Martha reached this point in her narrative.

'There was no one but our dear Mr. and Mrs. Allen,' returned Martha; 'they were staying at Brighton for the winter, because Bertha was so delicate. But it is wonderful how one finds help. Mr. Allen is a solicitor in Cottingdean. Betty often stays with them. They are such thoroughly nice people. Mr. Allen was so good. He went into business matters with me, and explained investments, and told me how much we should have to spend. Dear Mrs. Allen was with me every day. Oh, I don't know what I should have done without them, for Betty was too young to help me. She was only fifteen, and very childish for her age.

'It was a sister of Mrs. Allen's, Mrs. Merrick, who lived then at Uplands, who told us about the Old Cottage, and Mrs. Allen went with me to see it. It seemed a poor little place to me after 18 Shepperton Terrace, and yet I liked it. It was early in May, I remember, and the little common was golden with gorse.

'Father was very helpless just then, and he and his nurse and Betty had lodgings in Church Road, near Mrs. Merrick's, while Jane and I got the cottage ready; but humble as it is, I do not think we have ever repented coming here.

"What a dear, sweet, cosy little place," were Betty's

first words, when I showed her the house.

"It is quite

a doll's house, and we shall be dreadfully squeezed, but it is far more homelike than Shepperton Terrace." You do not know how thankful I was to hear her say that.'

'And Mr. Woodford?' Then Martha sighed.

'He was very much depressed at first, and I was afraid he would never settle. You see, his nerves had suffered so cruelly from the shock of Nicholson's shameful behaviour and double dealings, that it was months and months before he could recover himself. It used to make me so unhappy to see him sitting in his easy chair just brooding over his troubles; but our good Dr. Moorhouse cheered me up. He told me that in these cases time and patience were needed. "His whole system has sustained a severe shock," he said once; "it is a wonder that he is as well as he is. This fine air, and the perfect quiet and the absence of all anxiety, will be better than any medicine. Get a boy to wheel him out on the golf-links for two or three hours every day, and in the evening play some simple game with him." And Dr. Moorhouse was right. Father seems quite content and happy in his life. Now he seldom speaks of the past; when he does it is only to recall the old happy days at the Grange. When he looks sad we know he is thinking of mother and the boys; but he never troubles about business. I am thankful to say, that he is now as great a reader as ever, and though he has never recovered his walking powers, he manages, with the help of an arm and his stick, to get to a seat on the links on sunny mornings, where he can read his paper and watch the players. Winter is his worst time, but even then Betty and he take what they call their Polar

bear prowl in the verandah; and sometimes Mrs. Merrick takes him for a drive. Oh, I am far more happy about him now,' finished Martha, in a contented voice; and now he has a new pleasure in your brother's society.'

CHAPTER X

FLORAL MESSAGES

A sweet warm world in the sunlight basking
Under the widespread arch of blue;
A maze of blossoms the green grass masking,
Fragrant and fresh with the morning dew.

HELEN MARION BURNSIDE.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.-EMERSON.

THE seven or eight weeks which elapsed before the Lassiters took possession of their new home passed rapidly away. Sheila declared afterwards that they were the happiest she had ever known. 'You see we had all the pleasure of anticipation and preparation,' she remarked to Martha. 'We were like children gathering apples in an orchard-our mouths and our pinafores were full, but the fruit was still dangling before our eyes, all ready to be picked. When I pencilled my churchman's almanac at night, I felt like a schoolboy counting up the days before the holidays.'

Ned, indeed, had fits of impatience, and declared that he felt utterly demoralised and unfit for work; but in reality they were both too busy with their various engagements to have an unoccupied hour.