eyes were bent on her work, at which she was
now stitching away busily.

"Fanny! I wish you to go," said he authoritatively.
"It will do you good, instead
of harm. You will oblige me by going, without
my saying anything more about it."

He went abruptly out of the room after
saying this.

If he had staid a minute longer, Fanny
would have cried at his tone of command,
even when he used the words, " You will
oblige me." As it was, she grumbled.

"John always speaks as if I fancied I was
ill, and I am sure I never do fancy any such
thing. Who are these Hales that he makes
such a fuss about ?"

"Fanny, don't speak so of your brother.
He has good reasons of some kind or other, or
he would not wish us to go. Make haste and
put your things on."

But the little altercation between her son
and her daughter did not incline Mrs. Thornton
more favourably towards " these Hales."
Her jealous heart repeated her daughter's
question, "Who are they, that he is so
anxious we should pay them all this attention?"
It came up like a burden to a song
long after Fanny had forgotten all about it in
the pleasant excitement of seeing the effect of
a new bonnet in the looking-glass.

Mrs. Thornton was shy. It was only of late
years that she had had leisure enough in her
life to go into society; and as society she did
not enjoy it. As dinner-giving, and as criticising
other people's dinners, she took satisfaction
in it. But this going to make
acquaintance with strangers was a very
different thing. She was ill at ease, and
looked more than usually stern and forbidding
as she entered the Hales' little drawing-room.

Margaret was busy embroidering a small
piece of cambric for some little article of
dress for Edith's expected baby—" Flimsy
useless work," as Mrs. Thornton observed to
herself. She liked Mrs. Hale's double
knitting far better; that was sensible of its
kind. The room altogether was full of knick-
knacks, which must take a long time to dust;
and time to people of limited income was
money.

She made all these reflections as she was
talking in her stately way to Mrs. Hale, and
uttering all the stereotyped commonplaces
that most people can find to say with their
senses blindfolded. Mrs. Hale was making
rather more exertion in her answers, captivated
by some real old lace which Mrs.
Thornton wore; " lace," as she afterwards
observed to Dixon, " of that old English point
which has not been made for this seventy
years, and which cannot be bought. It must
have been an heir-loom, and shows that she
has ancestors." So the owner of the ancestral
lace became worthy of something more than
the languid exertion to be agreeable to a
visitor, by which Mrs. Hale's efforts at conversation
would have been otherwise bounded.
And presently, Margaret, racking her brain
to talk to Fanny, heard her mother and Mrs.
Thornton plunge into the interminable subject
of servants,

"I suppose you are not musical," said Fanny,
"as I see no piano."

"I am fond of hearing good music; I cannot
play well myself; and papa and mamma
don't care much about it; so we sold our old
piano when we came here."

"I wonder how you can exist without
one. It almost seems to me a necessary of
life."

"Fifteen shillings a week, and three saved
out of them! " thought Margaret to herself.
"But she must have been very young. She
probably has forgotten her own personal experience.
But she must know of those days."
Margaret's manner had an extra tinge of
coldness in it when she next spoke.

"You have good concerts here, I believe."

"Oh, yes! Delicious! Too crowded, that
is the worst. The directors admit so indiscriminately.
But one is sure to hear the
newest music there. I always have a large
order to give to Johnson's, the day after a
concert."

"Do you like new music simply for its newness,
then?"

"Oh! one knows it is the fashion in London,
or else-the singers would not bring it
down here. You have been in London, of
course."

"Yes," said Margaret, " I have lived there
for several years."

"Oh! London and the Alhambra are the
two places I long to see!"

"London and the Alhambra!"

"Yes! ever since I read the Tales of the
Alhambra. Don't you know them?"

"I don't think I do. But surely it is a very
easy journey to London."

"But somehow," said Fanny, lowering her
voice, " mamma has never been to London herself,
and can't understand my longing. She is
very proud of Milton; dirty, smoky place, as
I feel it to be. I believe she admires it the more
for those very qualities."

"If it has been Mrs. Thornton's home for
some years, I can well understand her loving
it," said Margaret, in her clear bell-like voice.

"What are you saying about me, Miss
Hale? May I inquire ?"

Margaret had not the words ready for
an answer to this question, which took her
a little by surprise, so Miss Thornton
replied:

"Oh, mamma! we are only trying to account
for your being so fond of Milton."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Thornton. "I do
not feel that my very natural liking for the
place where I was born and brought up,—
and which has since been my residence for some
years, requires any accounting for."

Margaret was vexed. As Fanny had put
it, it did seem as if they had been