sang the Scotch lady, and paused abruptly. She had sought a conversational opening and not found it, so she began with out it.

"My dear," she said, "does it never strike you as odd that I come here as I've told you I do year after year, to spend two months away from my family in Florence? You see I don't study art, or paint, and only practice the language a little here at the pension. You know I don't like to go sight-seeing. I only go to the Boboli Gardens and sit, knitting a little, every day. Did you never wonder why I come all the way from Scotland to do that?"

Adalina leaned forward and put her hand over the one still resting on the keys. She nodded a faint assent to the question. The habit of reserve sat strongly on the Scotch lady. It was some moments before she spoke and when she did the brownish red flush burnt in her cheeks again.

"I come here," she said at last, "to cherish a memory, lest it grow dim, for it is all I have. Do you think," she went on with a sudden change of tone, "that I have always been my present age, my child? No, and when I was young like you, I preferred an Italian memory to a-well, to a Scotch reality. And memories, my dear, I have found, are but poor treasure for a woman, when they are all she has. They haunt one at night and are but solitary companions in the day time. They are hard to keep separate, the good from the bad. I-I do not often speak of this, but I thought you would understand why I tell you. It is that you before it is too late might know-" She paused. Then, "Mine is not the only case. Think of Countess Elsa's mother, and the woman who does my sewing, supporting herself this way, says she hopes she and her children will never see her husband again. He is of this race - here in Italy." Her tone took on its usual crisp friendliness. "Americans for Americans, my child," she asserted, "and Scots for Scots. Let us leave Italians for Italians. Sorrow for sorrow happiness for happiness."

She left Adalina abruptly and the girl heard her saying in the next room in Italian to the landlady, "To the Boboli Gardens, as usual, precisely. Why? Oh! the fine view. Capito? Precisemente."

Adalina went to her own room. There was a letter waiting for her. One sentence only caught her attention, "May I join

you and your cousin in Paris? If you say I may I shall not do so without a certain hope." Adalina crushed the letter in her hand and tossed it, crackling, into her top drawer. Then, pondering deeply, she sat by her window in a low cushioned chair and listened to the cries of some cabmen in the street.

That evening after dinner Signor di Bromenti read some of his poems to Adalina, who could not understand them at all, but told him that they had a splendid "swing," a phrase that required much explanation. Then he translated them for her lamely in English and French. But her attention wandered. She wished that she could forget that in the morning when the Signor had joined Cousin Jennie and her in the rose garden of the inner courtyard, where they had their rolls and coffee, he had ordered two eggs which he had swallowed in as many gulps. She was glad that in America table manners were so perfect as to be unnoticed.

"They do not plees, my leetle poems," said Bromenti, noticing her inattention.

"They are very pretty," said Adalina, stiffly. All vivacity was gone from her this evening. She waved her hand slightly as if to dismiss the subject.

Bromenti leaned towards her suddenly, his heart in his eyes, declaring that the poetry did not matter, only one thing did, and that was one so great curiosity of his. If ever the kind signorina would rest her hand in his would he be able to feel it there it was so little, so most divinely little. Would she permit-evaire, so gracious signorina. He put out his own. trembling hand.

-" she

The gracious signorina rose and confronted him, her eyes cold and blue, like a lake before a storm. "Never," she said, defiantly yet softly withal. Then her eyes fell before the look in his. "I'm-I'm-sorry. Believe me-I did not mean said, very gently. Then, "I'm going to Paris next week with Cousin Jennie," she added with a certain New England exactness, "you won't see me any more." Bromenti rose and stood beside her, dumb, eloquently silent. "I- I'm sorry," she repeated, yet more softly. Then, without looking at him, she turned and ran upstairs to her own room.

Once there she looked from the photograph on the dresser, calm, enduring, ever practical, to the mantel where there was a large bunch of orchids purple and glowing, rich and pleasantly

perishable. "He'll forget. Italians for Italians,” she quoted, half aloud, "Happiness for happiness," and with a gesture almost dramatic she put out her hand and rang the bell.

Shortly thereafter the voice of a maid was heard loud in the hall shouting, "Ink! Carlo, ink quickly for the American signorina!"

When the writing materials appeared Adalina sat down at her desk and began three notes in succession to the same person. The first attempted to be casual and yet dignified. "My dear John," it began, "Cousin Jennie and I will be pleased to see you in Paris. It is always nice to meet one's fellow-countrymen when travelling abroad -—”

"Absurd!" exclaimed Adalina, "a farce !" and tore it in two. She made a fresh start. This one was to be pleasantly arch.

"Who am I, sir," it said, "that I should be giving permits to come to Paris? Am I a prefect of police or a mayor, that I may hand you the keys of the city?"

"Hopeless," commented Adalina, and laughed, her eyes half shut, the blue light quivering in them. She tore this note into tiny pieces, meditating the while. Then she drew a third sheet of paper towards her, and wrote on it a sentence, brief, ungrammatical, even harshly alliterative, but distinctly without circumlocution. It consisted of three words, reading, "You can come," and this she signed, not without some hesitation, “Adalina.” LUCIE SMITH LONDON.

MY RIVER

Ha' ye seen the lazy river,
Drowsy,-dreaming to the sea?
Ha' ye seen my bonnie river,
Flowing slowly down to sea?

Ah! it glides alang sae fairly,
Sae gentle, slow an' free,
Wi' a sleepy breeze aye blowing
Frae the lazy, swaying sea.

There be white mists resting on it,
An' the sun shines warm an' kind,
An' the waving reeds beside it
Love the lazy, drowsy wind.

There be slow, still sloops upon it,

Dropping down to go to sea,

An' the crew sings i' the distance

A song that comes to me.

Ha' ye seen my bonnie river,
Drowsy, dreaming down to sea,
Wi' the nodding reeds beside it,

As the sloop glides silently?

AMY GRACE MAHER.

THE SECRET OF MOTHER'S GIRL

She was afraid! That was certainly true. No one suspected her of such a weakness; that was also most certainly true. With great deliberation Mother's Girl untied her worsted slippers, toying with their pink bows for some minutes before she slipped between the cool sheets of her bed. Lying there, the shadows that the flickering candle threw upon the beamed ceiling seemed to grow large and threatening; and with a sigh of relief her glance returned to the ample bosom of Nurse. She cuddled down among the covers, hardly daring to move, and grateful for every moment that postponed the dreaded "goodnight." It was with a start that she heard the clicking of the needles cease. "Are you finished, Liebchen?" asked Nurse, taking up her knitting, and coming ponderously over to the bedside. But Mother's Girl was not in any haste for the "sleep kiss," as the children called it.

"How do you make stockings, Nurse ?" she inquired, with a fine show of interest and a detaining grasp on the blue yarn. The deluded woman's elaborate explanation gave her time to rack her brains for other equally effective questions. "But no," said Nurse, when a flood of new inquiries poured forth. "The little brother will cry if I make him wait any longer. I must go to him, for you, Liebchen, are not afraid to be left alone." Slowly the kindly candle disappeared down the stairs, and Mother's Girl was left quite by herself in the dark attic.

“You are not afraid to be left alone?" Oh! they must never discover her secret. They must never know that she, Mother's big girl, who scorned Pet for his baby ways, was herself afraid of the dark. All her life she had fibbed and suffered to hide

this terror. No one ever guessed how many a night she crept fearfully to the head of the stairs, when all believed her snugly asleep in bed; and crouching there watched the light that streamed into the hall from the fireplace below, and was reassured by the hum of voices. No one knew the hours that she shivered there, fearful of the darkness, and too proud to confess her fright, until Nurse's heavy tread was heard in the hall, and her fears vanished away. To have her big brother laugh at her and call "Fraid-cat!"-to have Father joke about his "Little Timid"; to have Pet lose his reverent worship of her in the wondering knowledge that she-his perfect sister-could fear anything, no amount of terror, she determined, could force her to endure such ignominy. Pet was small and foolish, and did not care when Mother said indulgently, "Go with him, dear. You know that he is afraid." To Mother's Girl, such a speech represented the acme of disgrace, and she fervently believed that not even wild beasts could force her to such a confession.

Wild beasts! Oh! She covered her ears hastily, hoping that thus she could exclude any unpleasant ideas. To-night for the first time that summer she had taken supper with Pet and been put to bed early. Mother and father had company,-ladies in gleaming gowns, who, when she appeared in the parlor, would always exclaim, "How do you do, my dear! How you have grown!"— and gentlemen, who were so busy talking to the ladies that they never noticed little girls. To be sure, her home was only a little Adirondack lodge, where the dining-room was in one cottage and the bedrooms in another. But to-night the dinner was to be an elaborate one; all the maids were busy preparing for it, and even Nurse would soon leave Pet and go over. Then they would be all alone!

Mother's Girl uncovered her ears and opened her eyes with a start. The room was deep in darkness, except where a few pale moonbeams straggled in through the curtains. Outside, the veranda was weirdly white, and the hammock bumped and swayed at intervals against the post. How black the corners of the room seemed! And all at once a vision of everything impossible and terrible that might lurk in them flashed into her mind. Without a moment of reflection, she jumped out of bed, and scurried quickly to the many nooks of the attic, poking her soft toes against the wood, and bruising them unmercifully, in