criticized with that quiet, easy confidence

liar to Indian children.

pecu

In an equally complimentary spirit I decided that she was a very ugly old woman, that she had a very queer red skin, and I did not like red half as well as black; altogether she was not to be compared in looks to my dear, kind, ebony-complexioned nursey.

"She would not seem so small like, maybe, if her bit of a face weren't most three parts taken up by such big brown eyes, and that thick frizzle of lashes round 'em," objected the housekeeper, who secretly regarded with great disfavour the addition to their hitherto sleepy, comfort-loving establishment of a sickly, restless child—an only child too, accustomed to be pampered and petted to the highest bent of her capricious unreasoning, and often perhaps utterly unreasonable, young fancies.

66

Ah, missy, de leetle beauty! dat what she is"; and nursey clasped my diminutive form in her loving arms, and kissed my faded check with the proud affection usual in that gentle race for their young charges. "She will grow up like her lubly mudder, and all de great grand gentilmans will go mad for her! Yes,

dat's what dey will!" again kissing and hugging me.

"Hum!" grumbled Mistress Patterson, looking exceedingly disposed to further relieve her annoyed feelings by a few more flattering comments on my personal appearance, but the return of grandmamma Denzell at once checked her loquacity.

Time rolled on, and the love I had borne my beautiful mother quickly and easily transferred itself to my grandmother.

Ah, who that knows can help loving her! -the "good lady" as par excellence she is denominated by all the poor of the country round. "Good lady,” truly !—one of the most tender-hearted, pious, sweet-tempered beings in the whole wide world.

So it was, however, the possession of my small self was productive after a while, and for a while, of as much grief as joy to her feelings. The grief was generated of the joy, the which it tended to strengthen and increase with its own growth, as every passing year full of gentle judicious training and of Christian culture of my character rendered me companionable in mind and manners to my refined,

high-principled grandmother. I thereby became more and more endeared to her heart. Now, the source of this sorrow was contained in the programme laid down by my father for my first performances on the world's great stage, and of the certain and satisfactory carrying out of which no doubt seemed to have been entertained. To begin: I was to reside with his mother, Lady Denzell, until my seventeenth birthday, and during that period no trouble or expense were to be spared in polishing my manners and perfecting my education. Accomplishments were especially to be attended to; music and dancing ranking next in estimation, if not beside beauty and freshness of looks, in the Indian matrimonial field, and in the race there it was clear my father confidently expected I would greatly distinguish myself.

As can well be imagined, the thought of such a termination of all her holy strivings and wishes for my present and eternal happiness was a bitter grief ever present to the pure mind of my grandmother, and cast a shadow, that darkened to intensity, her every pleasure as the time approached. Ah, how often is the lot thus

cast into the lap-how often, often! and plans thus formed, destinies proposed, yet doomed to reach no fuller maturity than did these!

Ere the expiration of five years from the time of my leaving India my mother died; and fourteen months after my father took to himself the consolation of a second wife, in the person of a handsome buxom widow. This lady was already liberally endowed with offspring of her own, six children-five daughters, all older than myself, and a son. Three of the girls were then quitting school in England to join their mother; the education of the others was not yet completed.

As a natural consequence, over-possession of anything lessens, if not altogether destroys, its value; and so it was, the feeling of ambition which, when excited in my father's heart for one daughter, was light and pleasant, became heavy and irksome, under an enforced service for five. Nor did there seem a prospect of these matrimonial labours soon terminating, for the following year Lady Denzell, to the extreme vexation of my father, as shown in his letter to grandmamma announcing the evidently unwelcome news that his wife had presented

him with a seventh daughter,-yes, and the next year, imitating its predecessor, with an eighth. "Eight girls!" wrote my father; "was ever man so afflicted!" Now was the moment; and while the iron was thus at white heat grandmamma struck vigorously. Off went a letter containing a proposal, which, coming at such a time, could not fail of being acceptable. She was desirous, she said, to adopt me as her daughter, and thus would not only relieve him of the burden of one of his eight girls, but of all future expense and anxiety on her account. This was too generous and desirable an offer to be lightly rejected; and, strengthened no doubt in this opinion by my mother-in-law, he dispatched a willing and grateful acceptance of her proposal. And now our one great grief being removed for I too had come to regard the threatened separation from grandmamma as, next to her death, the heavest affliction that could befall me-she and I became two of the happiest, most contented people in all the country round.