POOR JAMES WYMPER.

BY ALBANY FONBLANQUE,

Author of "The Tangled Skein," etc.

HEN he was a child they called him " poor little James." He wasn't little, and he wasn't poor, so far as worldly goods went; nor did those who called him "poor" use the word in kindness toward the motherless, neglected boy. He had red eyelids. No power could brush his hair smooth, or keep the knees of his trousers clean. He had a wonderful faculty for cutting his fingers, and wrapping them up in unpleasant-looking rags. He always had a cold in his head. At the age of twelve he could barely read two syllables. His only use in the world appeared to be to serve as an awful example to naughty boys, who would play with knives and disliked soap and water; and for this purpose he was used pretty freely. They sent him to a big school, where he did nothing but get bullied; and when his father died, and left him very poor in a new sense of the word, the distant relative who took him in charge out of charity could. find no better employment for him than to sweep out the office and run of errands. By this time he had ceased to be " poor little James," and became POOR JAMES WYMPER.

He could do nothing good of himself, and by some curious perversity set himself to undo the good that others had done. He had a craze for taking things to pieces by no means equalled by his capacity to put them together again. He complained

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that they did not give him time, and declared that this granted, the condition of the victims of his handiwork would be improved. Be this as it might be, every piece of mechanism that fell in his way, from his cousin's sewing-machine to the great hydraulic press at his protector's works, was made to suffer.

He had a fatal aptitude for being always in the way. He seemed to be all elbows. He could not move ten steps to save his life without treading upon some one's toes, or upsetting something. When you spoke to him, he was always in a fog. "The boy is half an idiot," groaned the worthy cotton-spinner, whose bread he ate.

At the age of eighteen he had made but two friends in the world, a blacksmith and a cat- an evil-minded black Tom, who swore at every one else, and bit them savagely when they attempted to put him through the tricks which poor James Wymper had taught him. Amateur hammering at the forge did not improve untidy Jim's appearance, and his cat-not being in a show did not increase his income. He ran errands for his cousin like a boy when he had attained man's estate, until one day when he ran one for himself—and did not come back again.

Fears were entertained that he had come to a bad end. The police were put in motion and rewards offered; but his friend. the blacksmith, upon being pressed, said that he had gone to "Mereker"-cat and all.

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I do not think that his relations were broken-hearted. fancy that good Mr. Bryce, the cotton-spinner, was rather glad to be rid of his wife's cousin, the errand-boy. His wife, who was not unkind to the forlorn lad in a way of her own,- a very cold way it was,— sighed several times apropos of nothing, and murmured," Poor James Wymper!

Five years passed, and Mrs. Bryce was left a widow, by no

means so well provided for as she expected to be. Moreover there was a lawsuit about the will, and a squabble in the winding-up of the partnership. She was glad to "get shut" - as her defunct lord would have said—of Manchester; and seeing an advertisement to the effect that a widow lady, having a house too large for her, pleasantly situated on the Thames near Maidenhead, was prepared to share it with just such a person as herself, transported herself thither, after a due exchange of references and such-like formalities, and found no reason to regret what she had done.

The other widow does not figure much in this story, and therefore it will be enough to say that she was a quiet, lady-like woman, rather afraid of her partner in house-keeping, with a daughter, aged eighteen, who ruled the pair, and made the place very pleasant.

Bessy Jervoice was not pretty. Besides her eyes she had not a good feature in her face; but it was a good face--earnest and loving, with a sub-current of fun running under it (as the stream runs under the water-lilies), and rippling out constantly. Her figure and her hair were simply perfection. Her little thoroughbred hands were ever busy, and the patter of her dainty feet was pleasant music in many a poor cottage.

Things went on very smoothly at the river-side villa until one rainy day, when, without a "with your leave," or "by your leave," or letter, or telegram, or message, or any other sort of preparation, in marches poor James Wymper, dripping with rain and splashed with mud up to his hat!

'If you please, cousin Margaret, I've come back," he said, subsiding in his old, low-spirited way into an amber-satin drawing-room chair, which in two minutes he soaked through and through.

That was all. No excuse, no petition; a simple announcement that he had come back, conveyed in a manner which

made it sufficiently clear that he intended to remain. “If you please, cousin Margaret, I've come back." Not another word did he say, and relapsed into thinking of something else, as usual.

Interrogated respecting his luggage, he replied that it was on the hall-table, and there, sure enough, was found a sodden bundle, containing a soiled flannel-shirt, a pair of slippers, two pipes, a cloth cap without a peak, and a sailor's knife. In answer to further inquiries he stated that his means were eightpence, that he had been living in America, that he had walked from Liverpool, and that he wanted something to eat. When dried and fed, and asked what he was going to do, he said, "Whatever you please;" and appearing to consider that all difficulty was thus disposed of, he went to sleep.

Poor Mrs. Bryce was at her wits' end. Ordinary hints were thrown away upon such a man. When she said she supposed he was going on to London, he replied, Oh, dear no, he had come from London. When she told him she was only a lodger in the house, he observed that it was a very nice house to lodge in. I have said that she was kind to him in her way when he was an errand-boy, and somehow she could not be hard upon him now. There was something half ludicrous, half melancholy, in his helplessness that disarmed them all. Bessy declared him to be the largest baby she had ever seen, persisted in speaking of him as it, and scandalized the matrons by inquiring gravely after tea which of them was going to put it to bed.

"It's rather unkind for you to jest so, Bessy," said poor Mrs. Bryce, "when you see how distressed I am. What on earth am I to do?"

"I suppose it's too old for the Foundling?" mused Bessy.

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Bessy, be quiet!" said her mother.

"You dear old darling," said the pert one afterwards, "don't

you see that we cannot treat this thing seriously without making