"But horridly ugly," and Anna looked up from the reverie in which she had been indulging. "Lottie says she has tow hair and a face like a fish. John would never be happy with such a wife." "Possibly you think he had better have married that sewing girl about whom he wrote us just before going to Europe," Miss Eudora said spitefully, pinching the long silken ears of her pet until the animal yelled with pain. There was a faint sigh from the direction of Anna's chair, and all knew she was thinking of the missionary. The mother continued: "I trust he is over that fancy, and ready to thank me for the strong letter I wrote him." "Yes, but the girl," and Anna leaned her white cheek in her whiter hand. "None of us know the harm his leaving her may have done. Don't you remember he wrote how much she loved him--how gentle and confiding her nature was, and how to leave her then might prove her ruin?" "Our little Anna is growing very eloquent upon the subject of sewing girls," Miss Asenath said, rather scornfully, and Anna rejoined: "I am not sure she was a sewing girl. He spoke of her as a schoolgirl." "But it is most likely he did that to mislead us," said the mother. "The only boarding school he knows anything about is the one where Lottie was. If he were not her uncle by marriage I should not object to Lottie as a daughter," was the next remark, whereupon there ensued a conversation touching the merits and demerits of a certain Lottie Gardner, whose father had taken for a second wife Miss Laura Richards. This Laura had died within a year of her marriage, but Lottie had claimed relationship to the family just the same, grandmaing Mrs. Richards and aunty-ing the sisters. John, however, was never called uncle, except in fun. He was too near her age, the young lady frequently declaring that she had half a mind to throw aside all family ties and lay siege to the handsome young man, who really was very popular with the fair sex. During this discussion of Lottie, Anna had sat listlessly looking up and down the columns of an old _Herald_, which Dick, Eudora's pet dog, had ferreted out from the table and deposited at her feet. She evidently was not thinking of Lottie, nor yet of the advertisements, until one struck her notice as being very singular. Holding it a little more to the light she said: "Possibly this is the very person I want--only the child might be an objection. Just listen," and Anna read as follows: "WANTED--By an unfortunate young married woman, with a child a few months old, a situation in a private family either as governess, seamstress, or lady's maid. Country preferred. Address--" Anna was about to say whom when a violent ringing of the bell announced an arrival, and the next moment a tall young man, exceedingly Frenchified in his appearance, entered the room, and was soon in the arms of his mother.