Nigel Browning by Agnes Giberne — Read

"I come, I come! ye have called me long, / I come o'er the mountains with light and song; / Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth, / By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, / By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass, / By the green leaves opening as I pass. " / -F. HEMANS.

THE month of May had come-a real typical May; not one of our modern snarling specimens, which perhaps our forefathers knew as well as ourselves, but which, of course, no poet or historian ever wrote down on the "deathless page" of literature. A bright blaze of spring sunshine streamed upon the stiff row of trees in the green enclosure of Bourne Street, and made its way through the draped lace curtains of No. 9, where ingenuity had been hard at work to transform a most ordinary little drawing-room into a finished and aesthetic gem. It had to be done cheaply; but that matters less where clever fingers and cultivated taste have sway. Grange furniture was present-not Grange drawing-room furniture, which would have been far too large, but dainty small tables and pretty chairs, selected from all parts of the big house. Fulvia had combined tints gracefully, had put up brackets, had spent hours over finishing touches, had acted throughout as guiding spirit. If she could win a smile from Nigel for his mother's sake, she was content. She would have slaved herself to death for that reward.