“'I hope your young friend is a fisherman, which will give me more chance of his company than walking up the partridges, for which I am getting too old. Let him however understand that we mean him to enjoy himself in his own way, to have the most perfect liberty, and that the only despotism we insist upon is, not to be late for dinner. “'Your loving brother, “'Peter Barrington. “'There is no fatted calf to feast our return, Dinah, but Withering has an old weakness for a roast sucking-pig. Don't you think we could satisfy it?'” Conyers readily caught the contagion of the joy Miss Barrington felt at the thought of her brother's return. Short as the distance was that separated him from home, his absences were so rare, it seemed as though he had gone miles and miles away, for few people ever lived more dependent on each other, with interests more concentrated, and all of whose hopes and fears took exactly the same direction, than this brother and sister, and this, too, with some strong differences on the score of temperament, of which the reader already has an inkling. What a pleasant bustle that is of a household that prepares for the return of a well-loved master! What feeling pervades twenty little offices of every-day routine! And how dignified by affection are the smallest cares and the very humblest attentions! “He likes this!” “He is so fond of that!” are heard at every moment It is then that one marks how the observant eye of love has followed the most ordinary tricks of habit, and treasured them as things to be remembered. It is not the key of the street door in your pocket, nor the lease of the premises in your drawer, that make a home. Let us be grateful when we remember that, in this attribute, the humblest shealing on the hillside is not inferior to the palace of the king! Conyers, I have said, partook heartily of Miss Barring-ton's delight, and gave a willing help to the preparations that went forward. All were soon busy within doors and without. Some were raking the gravel before the door; while others were disposing the flower-pots in little pyramids through the grass plats; and then there were trees to be nailed up, and windows cleaned, and furniture changed in various ways. What superhuman efforts did not Conyers make to get an old jet d'eau to play which had not spouted for nigh twenty years; and how reluctantly he resigned himself to failure and assisted Betty to shake a carpet!