Laddie, and Miss Toosey's Mission

Eighteen months have passed away since my story began; and it is no longer dull, foggy, November, but May, beautiful even in London, where the squares and parks are green and fresh, and the lilacs and laburnums in bloom, and the girls sell lilies-of-the-valley and wall flowers in the streets, and trucks with double stocks and narcissus "all a-growing and a-blowing" pass along, leaving a sweet, reviving scent behind them. The sky is blue, with great soft masses of cotton-wool cloud; and the air is balmy and pure in spite of smoke and dirt; and sweet spring is making his power felt, even in the very midst of London. It is blossoming time in the heart as well as in the Kentish apple orchards; and the heart cannot help feeling gay and singing its happy little song even though its cares, like the poor larks in the Seven Dial's bird shops, ruffling their soft breasts and knocking their poor brown heads against their cages in their ecstacy of song.

Dr. Carter had good cause for happiness that day, though, indeed, he was moving among sickness and suffering in a great London hospital. He had some lilies in his coat that Violet fastened there with her own hands; and as she did so he had whispered, "Only another week, Violet; " for their wedding day was fixed in the next week. And was not that a thought that suited well with the lovely May weather, to make him carry a glad heart under the lilies? The wedding had been long delayed from one cause and another, but principally because the search for the old mother had been altogether fruitless, in spite of the confidence of the police.