one day, and you said that she was grim and

hard-featured.'

'Little girls must not be so free with their criticism,' said Mrs. Bertram, smiling only a little. I do not want my Thomasina to grow up pert and forward. I wish that you had regular school-room discipline instead of living so much with your elders.'

I wish so too,' said Thomasina, speaking by a sudden impulse, which brought the vivid colour flushing over her face and neck; 'I should like to learn lessons with the little

Windsors. They must have a regular

school-room.'

'What do you know of the little Windsors, Thomasina?'

Not so very much, mammy; but I see them in church, and I think that they look nice. There are two little girls with red hair, about as old as I am, and another tall sister, who has her hair turned up. And there are

two boys, very nice indeed, who ride through the park to school.'

6

Why you know a great deal, Thomasina. How long has the scheme been working in your little brain ?'

I do not know, mammy. It is rather dull to have nothing regular to do, and only grown-up people to talk to."

'It is nothing to be ashamed of, at any rate,' said Mrs. Bertram, observing that eagerness had brought tears into the child's eyes. 'I hardly know what your father will say to your associating with the children, but I used to know Mrs. Windsor slightly, and she was a ladylike, well-educated woman. We must think over the matter, and, in the meantime, I am pleased to find that you wish for school life in any shape.' And Thomasina was well satisfied with this reception of her grand scheme for a closer association with her new acquaintance.

CHAPTER III.

THAT very night Mrs. Bertram was seized with one of the hysterical attacks to which she had for some time been liable, and it was followed by insensibility and death. Thomasina never again saw her mother in life, although she was led into the darkened room to kiss her cold, dead face. It had been a poor, useless life, as Mrs. Grey remarked, with greater truth than tenderness remorseless wave of Time had closed over it, and she was little missed or mourned. Even the little girl cried more from an indignant sense of her own hardness of heart than with any true sorrow. As she crept past the rooms which her mother had occupied, she remembered with compunction how

the

often she had trod more lightly in passing the door, lest Mrs. Bertram should hear and call her in; how she had sometimes even feigned not to hear the call, because the atmosphere of the sick-room oppressed and wearied her. The husband's grief was scarcely more genuine; marriage had made no difference in his habits, and, except for the added tenderness which he lavished on his child, the severance of the tie wrought little apparent change. The signs of outward mourning were, however, deep; the great square pew was hung with black, and the young Windsors looked with awe-struck and pitiful eyes at Thomasina as she walked up the aisle beside her father, in her crape frock and bonnet, on the Sunday after the funeral.

The question again arose, what was to be done with Thomasina; and on the same. afternoon, when the little girl was seated on her father's knee in one of the bay windows

of the library, the matter was discussed between them. What do you think that Aunt Thomasina says?' said Anthony, inserting his broad finger into one of the child's brown curls.

'I suppose that she wants to cut off my hair; and I am sure that I do not care,' said Thomasina a little defiantly.

I should care very much, my little woman. But it is not that. We have been wondering what you are to do, now that there can be no more lessons with mamma, and Aunt Thomasina says that you ought to go to school or have a governess, like other little girls, instead of roaming about like an unbroken colt.'

'I don't believe that Aunt Thomasina is so very fond of reading,' said the child, glancing across the room towards the chair on which the old lady sat upright, making preternatural efforts to keep awake over a