bold as a duck. I might have stood for half-an-hour at the gate, and come to no harm; you are more likely to be wet. Yes, my dear, those thin shoes must be wet through and through; it is you who should be looked after, pray change them."

By this time Miss Barnard had taken off the galoshes and cloak, (Mrs. Wynne's and Barbara's Christmas presents to one who never would have thought of them for herself,) and turned into the schoolroom, saying, "You will let me see Hetty's letter, if I

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may

Yes, I will not forget," answered Barbara, thinking as she turned away, "how can she be so cheerful and grateful! if I were a governess, the kinder people were to me the more I should hate them."

It struck nine. Where was Gordon? Not in the parlour; not in the dining nor drawing-room. Hannah thought he was with Mistress, so up stairs Barbara went, and knocked at her mother's door.

"Who is it ?" asked Mrs. Wynne, fretfully. Is Gordon here ?"

"I, mamma.

"No; and my dear, I cannot be disturbed."

As she was upstairs Barbara ran into her own room to follow Miss Barnard's advice about her shoes, and also to give herself a little time to recover her temper, which was more upset than she liked to own.

After a hunt extending even to the attics, Gordon was discovered in the kitchen-a place where all were strictly forbidden ever to be. Barbara was obliged to satisfy herself with thinking that this was no business of her's, and to content herself with telling him to come to his lessons.

"Did mamma send you ?"

"No; she is not well enough to hear you herself; you are to do them with me."

'Oh, then there's no hurry."

"Yes, as much as if you were coming to mamma," answered the bold Barbara, "it has struck nine, so you must come at once."

Her resolute tone had some effect, but the next

minute Gordon took up again the hazel bough he was fashioning into a stick, and prepared to cut on, saying, "Mamma always lets me have a few minutes; I never go before the quarter."

This was so nearly true, that Barbara could not gainsay it.

"Then promise me to come punctually at the quarter."

"Yes."

The promise was too lightly given for Barbara to put much faith in it, and so she stayed to say, "Remember, I put you on your honour;" and then went back to the parlour to feel equally dissatisfied with what she had done and what she had left undone. She had said not a word about Gordon's being where she knew as well as he did that he ought not to have been, and had given way about the lessons after she had said that he should come at once. Could Hetty herself have been-well to think honestly-weaker?

Yet could she have done more? Poor Barbara, she had little thought what a perplexed path that of the eldest sister is. Like most other girls, she had believed all duty to be clear when once honestly faced. She had now to learn the bitter truth, that the hardest trial of those who earnestly long to do right is that very often they cannot tell what the right is.

A quarter-past nine came, but no Gordon; twenty minutes past, and she went to the kitchen passage and called him, and then he did appear.

"Don't you know, Gordon, that it is very dishonest and wicked to break a promise ?"

Gordon, however, thought it best not to answer, and followed her in silence.

"Well, now, Gordon," she began as soon as she was seated, her patience already almost exhausted, "your lessons."

Well, but you have those you learnt the day before."

"But I never learnt them; and if I had I should not have remembered them all this time."

“Then your reading.”

The lessons progressed on the whole favourably till eleven o'clock struck, for Gordon had a wholesome if faint feeling that he must not go too far with Barbara. Then in the middle of writing 'London, the metropolis of England' in a hand that did but little credit to a boy of nine, he flung down his pen, and dabbing his blotting paper over the straggling characters, prepared to shut up the copy-book.

"What are you about, Gordon ?"

"It's eleven, I've done."

"No, you have not done," answered Barbara, sharply, "you did not begin your lessons till twenty minutes past nine, and you shall stay till twenty minutes past eleven."

"I won't."

"You will. Now open your book, and go on at once," answered Barbara, unwaveringly.

At any rate, Gordon did not set her at defiance by running away as he would have been pretty sure to have done with Hetty. He only sat and sulked.

"Now, Gordon, the sooner you begin the better for yourself. Every minute you waste now, I shall make you stay and make up."

Gordon, with unusual humility, burst into tears.

Pray don't be so silly," said Barbara quite pathetically in her earnestness, "why don't you do at once as you are told? By the time you have written those two lines well, you will be able to go; but if you sit there crying, no one can tell when your lessons will be over."

After this exordium, she resumed her work, and had the resolution to stitch on without showing any cognizance of the stealthy glances which Gordon soon began to send between his task-mistress and his task.

Finally, he took up the pen and wrote. Barbara's soul glowed within her at her triumph over such a spoilt, unmanageable boy.

Gordon was extremely unwilling to allow that he ought to learn his lessons as usual that afternoon, but at last even this point was carried, the writing materials put by, and he and his governess set free of one another for the rest of the day, as far as lessons were concerned; a greater relief to Barbara than it could be even to Gordon himself.

Miss Barnard declined Barbara's invitation to dinner, and went back to her own home in the village where she lived with a widowed sister, and her three daughters and four sons, who, through her exertions and Mr. Wynne's bounty, were receiving at the grammar school as good an education as her pupils' own brothers. Her departure was soon followed by the arrival of the three boys from this school, Hargrave and Will very much perplexed how to pass the hour till dinner, for it was still pouring as relentlessly as in the early morning. Perhaps, though he little thought it, or did his cleverer brothers, David with his imposition was the most happily circumstanced of the three, for his occupation was already marked out for him; and no sooner did he get home than he turned into the school-room to spend an hour over what would not have taken either of his brothers half that time.

Barbara guessed from his long face what was the matter, and followed him to be of what help she could. With her strong love of justice she scarcely refrained from hating and despising happy and unconscious Dr. Vane for first putting her brother into a class for which he was not fit, and then suffering him to be punished day after day for his incapacity. From Hargrave and Will's lessons she had always held aloof, and told them it was cheating if they asked and obtained help elsewhere; but to her mind, David's plodding dulness was the exception that made this general rule for once wrong.

She and poor David were soon hard at work, little heeding the distant noises and skirmishes of the other boys, until Barbara was most unpleasantly reminded of them by Hannah's entrance to say, "Missus had rung to say she could not have so much noise."

Barbara was extremely vexed at having allowed care for one brother to make her forget the others, and thus commit such an oversight as this; so thoroughly vexed that she sprang up to quell the riot, exclaiming, "Elizabeth might have known I could not do two things at once, and have seen to them; but she never is in the way when wanted."

She went to the parlour where the three boys were, and ordered quiet not very amiably; however, as she mentioned the cause, they were content to desist, Will even saying, "he was very sorry, he was sure; if he had known mother had been ill, he wouldn't have made such a row."

It was impossible to keep ill-tempered when met with such good-humoured honesty, and Barbara recovering herself, forbore when sending Laura for Elizabeth, to add the sharp words she had intended. Boys, however, are but boys, and through the door she now left open soon came noise enough to make her uneasy.

"Never mind me," said David seeing her half rise, and then sit down again.

"Yes, you are as much to be attended to as anyone; it is too bad of Elizabeth! I won't be a minute,” and away she ran to her sister's room. The door was locked." Elizabeth!" she called, sharply.

Elizabeth opened it hurriedly, and blushing.
"Did not Laura give you my message ?"
"Yes."

"Then why did you not come at once? You never will be of any use if you can avoid it. You know that will not be blamed for the noise."

you

"I am very sorry," answered Elizabeth, humbly, "Laura did not say I was wanted at once, and-"