bedroom door softly opened. Once more, Miss
Verinder appeared on the threshold, in her
pretty summer dress.

"Do me a last favour," she whispered.
"Let me watch him with you."

I hesitated—not in the interests of propriety;
only in the interest of her night's rest. She
came close to me, and took my hand.

"I can't sleep; I can't even sit still, in my
own room," she said. "Oh, Mr. Jennings, if
you were me, only think how you would long to
sit and look at him. Say, yes! Do!"

Is it necessary to mention that I gave way?
Surely not!

She drew a chair to the foot of the sofa. She
looked at him, in a silent ecstasy of happiness,
till the tears rose in her eyes. She dried her
eyes, and said she would fetch her work. She
fetched her work, and never did a single stitch of
it. It lay in her lap—she was not even able to
look away from him long enough to thread her
needle. I thought of my own youth; I thought
of the gentle eyes which had once looked love
at me. In the heaviness of my heart, I turned
to my Journal for relief, and wrote in it what
is written here.

So we kept our watch together in silence.
One of us absorbed in his writing; the other
absorbed in her love.

Hour after hour, he lay in his deep sleep.
The light of the new day grew and grew in the
room, and still he never moved.

Towards six o'clock, I felt the warning which
told me that my pains were coming back. I
was obliged to leave her alone with him for a
little while. I said I would go up-stairs, and
fetch another pillow for him out of his room.
It was not a long attack, this time. In a little
while, I was able to venture back and let her
see me again.

I found her at the head of the sofa, when I
returned. She was just touching his forehead
with her lips. I shook my head as soberly as
I could, and pointed to her chair. She looked
back at me with a bright smile, and a charming
colour in her face. "You would have done it,"
she whispered, "in my place!"

*****

It is just eight o'clock. He is beginning to
move for the first time.

Miss Verinder is kneeling by the side of the
sofa. She has so placed herself that when his
eyes first open, they must open on her face.

Shall I leave them together?

Yes!

* * * * *

Eleven o'clock. They have arranged it
among themselves; they have all gone to
London by the ten o'clock train. My brief
dream of happiness is over. I have awakened
again to the realities of my friendless and lonely
life.

I dare not trust myself to write down the
kind words that have been said to me—
especially by Miss Verinder and Mr. Blake.
Besides, it is needless. Those words will come
back to me in my solitary hours, and will

help me through what is left of the end of my
life. Mr. Blake is to write, and tell me what
happens in London. Miss Verinder is to
return to Yorkshire in the autumn (for her
marriage, no doubt); and I am to take a holiday,
and be a guest in the house. Oh me,
how I felt it, as the grateful happiness looked
at me out of her eyes, and the warm pressure
of her hand said, "This is your doing!"

My poor patients are waiting for me. Back
again, this morning, to the old routine! Back
again, to-night, to the dreadful alternative
between the opium and the pain!

God be praised for his mercy! I have seen
a little sunshine—I have had a happy time.

LEAVES "FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.

A CUP OF TEA.

A CUP of tea! Blessings on the words, for
they convey a sense of English home comfort,
of which the proud Gaul, with all his boulevards
and battalions, is as ignorant as a turbot is of
the use of the piano. What refinement or
gentleness could there have been in those times
when our rude ancestors in the peascod doublets
and trunk hose and our rugged ancestress in the
wheel ruff and farthingale sat down to breakfast
over a quart of humming ale or a silver tankard
of Canary?

There was no pleasant tea-table for Shakespeare
to talk wisely at, no cup of fragrant
Souchong for Spenser to recite poetry over. No
wonder that wise men then ignored the fairer
sex, shrank from the bottle, and got together
in taverns where wit might lighten and wisdom
thunder. Lucky Milton—lucky because he
over smoking Bohea no doubt saw visions
of the golden gates of Paradise and the
amaranthine meadows of Eden. But seriously, has
not tea ministered vastly to our tranquil home
pleasures and calm home life, and was it not a
kindly providence that raised the tea-cup to
our tired lips just as our City life grew more
busy and more sedentary? Happy the brave
brain-workers who were born after the coming
in of the sweet herb of China!

It was for a long time supposed that the
use of tea began in Tartary, and was not
introduced into China till the empire was
conquered by the Tartars, ten years before
the Restoration of Charles the Second; but this
is entirely an error, as Bontius, a Leyden
professor, who flourished in the reign of James the
First, mentions the general use of tea by the
Chinese twenty years before the Tartars
clambered over the Great Wall or marched past the
great blue-tiled Pagodas.

The Chinese have two curious old legends,
which are worth repeating, as first contributions
to the mythology of the leapot.

The first relates to the Origin of the
Teaplant.

Darma, a very religious prince, son of
Kasinwo, an Indian king, and the twenty-eighth
descendant of Tiaka, a negro monarch