Four Gates by Amy Le Feuvre

"Lo! At the couch where infant beauty sleeps, Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps; She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies, Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes, And weaves a song of melancholy joy- 'Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy; No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine; No sigh that rends thy father's heart and mine; Bright as his manly sire the son shall be In form and soul; but ah! more blest than he! Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love at last Shall soothe this aching heart for all the past- With many a smile my solitude repay, And chase the world's ungenerous scorn away. " CAMPBELL.

MEANWHILE, downstairs Fay was having tea in the drawing-room with her aunt. She came in from the garden when she was called, rubbing her wet little red hands with her handkerchief.

"I'm quite tidy still," she informed Miss Selkirk in her cheerful little voice; "I muddied my hands over the grave, and then, I washed them in a lovely tank of water outside the stable. Is mummie better?"

"Your mother is in bed. You must sit still on that chair and not make any crumbs."

Fay was most anxious to oblige. She handled her bread and butter most carefully, but her tongue could not keep silent.

"I do like this house very much," she said. "Are we going to sleep here many nights? I was finking I could show you how to play cat's-cradle after tea-if you was dull, I mean. Would you like to try? It's very easy. Daddy and me does it wonderful."

"How long has your father left you?"

"He put us on the ship, you know. He didn't leave us. We lefted him. Poor daddy! It's a drefful sad fing for him to be left without his little girl! And mummie too-that's a dreffuller thing. I used to live alone with him once upon a time, you know, before we knowed mummie. It was rather uncomfable, 'cause daddy couldn't mend my stockings, and my curls was so tangly him and me used to give up the comb and take to the brush, and that mummie says is very bad for a child's head. Poor mummie! She does miss daddy so much, and so do I. But, you see, I've got her, and she's got nobody."

A pause, then:

"Do you know, Aunt Marget, I fink if you was to ask me, I could say 'Yes' to that nice currant cake."

It says much for Miss Selkirk's imperturbability of spirits that never a smile came to her lips as her small niece chatted on. Fay was perfectly oblivious of the gravity of her aunt. She enjoyed her tea thoroughly. And then getting off her chair, remarked:

"I fink I had better go to mummie. I know she's rather troubled about us. And I'll tell her to go to sleep, and I'll say 'God bless you,' like she does me. You're quite sure we shan't have to go away before to-morrow?"

"If you are a very good little girl," said Miss Selkirk, "you shall stay some weeks with me, and your mother too."

"I fink I'm good nearly always," said Fay, balancing on one foot and looking up into her aunt's face thoughtfully, "but the devil seeks me pretty often, you know. The Bible says so, and when he roars at me to run and hide when I'm out of doors, and mummie calls me-well then I do it! He's so tarsome when he roars!"

She pattered out of the room after this speech.

And Miss Selkirk sat and looked into her fire, for she knew that she had undertaken no light charge when she had offered Honor and Fay a home, and she could not yet get accustomed to the ways of such a child as Fay.

After a long night's rest, Honor was wonderfully refreshed and rested. Old Christine's kindness had comforted her much.

And when she came downstairs the next morning, and Miss Selkirk expressed surprise at seeing her down to breakfast, she said:

"I do not give way as a rule. It is not often I feel so done for as I did yesterday."

After breakfast, as it was a bright morning, Fay was turned loose in the garden again. She was already the greatest friends with all the servants. She had invaded the kitchen and shaken hands with the old cook and the young housemaid, informing them that she meant to have a kitchen of her own when she grew up and cook all day long. She had been taken by Isaacs the groom to see the fat grey pony in the stable, and the Irish terrier, who loved the pony better than anyone else in the world. And now that she was well out of the way, and Honor employed with the needlework that was seldom out of her hand, Miss Selkirk began to talk about her brother.