complain, she had felt at first perhaps too sensitively the difference between a home filled with the atmosphere of love, and one where she was apparently considered a dependant stranger. Ellen and Etty, whose ages were respectively twenty-one and eighteen, were both intending to follow Jane's example, as the only means of lightening the burdens of the maternal household. The eldest son, Edward, now twenty-three, had been educated by the generosity of their only uncle, and had recently completed his college course; but after making a stay of some months in London, found his prospects so precarious, that he purposed emigrating in the spring to America. Philip, the younger son, scarcely twenty, had at the first alteration in the circumstances of the family accepted a situation as usher in the school where he had previously been educated, and which was but a few miles' distance from his home, and whence he had no thought of removing.

This family party, for Jane was considered one of themselves, were to have spent their Christmas with the uncle in London, who had so liberally assisted their brother Edward; but unfortunately that generous relative had speculated in railway shares, and was suffering the general depression; so that business calling him to Scotland, he suddenly resolved, as a prudential matter, to let his house in London; and, it was believed by the family, he would not speedily return from the north. This matter had only been fully communicated by the post that morning; up to that time the sanguine hopes

of youth had led the juniors to believe their London visit decided; so that it must be admitted, what with the disappointment of the present, and the precariousness of the future, there was some reason for gloom and that the place was dull no one could deny-lying sixteen miles from the railway station, and having no staple trade or manufacture. On the modern alteration of modes of travelling coaches ceased to pass through, and all who could, departed to new scenes of life, and new opportunities of activity.

Perhaps there are few trials more salutary than those which throw young persons on their own resources. Many a previously undeveloped talent is drawn forth, and strengthened by exercise; many a habit is cultivated that tends to form the character and fix the principles; and if nothing more is gained, the custom of depending less on external, and more on individual sources for improvement and recreation is a valuable attainment, likely to be beneficial to its possessor through life.

CHAPTER II.

SMALL MEANS AND GREAT ENDS AN OLD
WOMAN'S STORY.

ON the first evening after the conversation recorded in the preceding chapter, the night set in early, even for December; and a high wind, that howled without, and swept down the deserted street, made the cheerful fire that blazed in the parlour-grate look yet more glowing and genial, as, leaving the tea-table, the family group gathered closer around it. The elder ladies were knitting, Ellen and Jane were busily employed at the very crochet Etty so often severely censured by the terms "make-believe-work," "busy idleness," and "showy trivialities;" while the latter personage, in all the dignity of what she called sensible and useful occupation, was sitting rather apart from the group, elaborately darning some household linen,a chair at her side supporting her ponderous work. The brothers had wheeled up a little writing-table, covered with books and papers, to the centre of the fire-side circle, and were soon seated at it, and looking over its contents. It was a scene of domestic comfort and repose, combined, for the time, with a stillness so great, that the rustle of the papers on the table, as they were turned over

by the brothers, the click of the knitting-needles, so swiftly plied by the old ladies, the flickering of the flame as it leaped and quivered from the glowing coals, and even the purr of the drowsy cat on the hearth-rug, were all distinctly heard between the pauses of the gusty wind. Etty looked up many times from her darning, and her eyes wandered from one to another, with arch meaning in their laughing glance; but she spoke not;

"And all her thoughts congeal'd into lines on her face, as the vapours Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window-panes in winter."

It happened that Jane, looking up, read the meaning of her face, and exclaimed,—

"Ah, Etty! you are inwardly laughing at this silent commencement of the morning's project. I see the thought in your face. My dear and much-abused crochet-work does not, you perceive, prevent my reading even looks; and as to listening, it will never hinder that."

"But contributing, Jane! Ours is to be a jointstock affair. No withholding. How will you contribute to the wonderful bank of intellectual recreation we are to form, if you go on counting stitches and planning patterns? Now my work is at once mechanical and useful. It leaves my mind at liberty, and it occupies my fingers. I'm for utility,a principle I fancy ladies generally don't understand."

An arch, good-natured laugh, with the words, "Oh, wise Etty!" broke from the group at the grave remark; and Jane rejoined,—

"Far be it from me to depreciate your work, or to deny the principle that usefulness is the first thing to be consulted; but I should not agree in your definition of utility, if you restricted it to ministering merely to absolute necessities. There would be a mournful blank in the world of nature and of mind, if that were the principle acted on. There would be no flowers, no perfume, no songbirds, no dew-drops in the external world; and there would also be no poetry, no music, no eloquence among mankind. Surely utility depends not so much on the abstract nature of things as in their right application."

"Yes," interposed Edward; "and everything, therefore, that ministers to the power of thought, to the perception of the beautiful,—that extends the range of innocent enjoyments, and intellectualizes our recreations, is useful. Though I confess that, with Etty, I am often at a loss to see the utility of the works on which ladies spend so much time. They are beautiful, doubtless, as specimens of ingenuity and patience; but I know they are often inimical to conversation, and, I have heard, are not to be defended on the score of economy: for a scientific friend of mine, living in a remote town in Essex, constructed an observatory, and fitted it up with a telescope and other astronomical instruments, at the same expense that a young lady, the daughter of a rich farmer in the neighbourhood, worked a set of chairs and sofas for her drawing-room.'

"Ah, that charge of expense does not apply