"Yes; come here, Daisy." He measured me with his eye, then added triumphantly, "She will fit in it; it is just her size, Kate! see if it is not, when it arrives! just her size." "Just her size! bless the boy! does he not mean the poor child to grow?" "Faith!" exclaimed Cornelius, looking astonished, "I never thought of that, never!--and yet," he added thoughtfully, "I think I can remember her shorter than she is now." "You are the most foolish lad in all Ireland!" hotly observed Miss O'Reilly, with whom, though she had left it many years, her native country was ever present. She gave him a scolding, which he bore with perfect good-humour. A little mollified by this, she changed the subject by asking-- "Well, how did the child answer?" "Oh,--hem! Oh, very well, of course." He had already forgotten all about it, as I felt, with some mortification. Quite unconscious of this, he rose, opened the piano, and turning to his sister, said-- "What shall I sing you, Kate?" "Anything you like,--one of the Melodies." She sat back to listen, with her hand across her eyes, whilst, in a rich harmonious voice, her brother sang one of those wild and beautiful Irish melodies,--plaintive as the songs of their own land which the captives of Sion sang by the rivers of Babylon. I listened, entranced, until he closed the piano, and read aloud to his sister from a book of travels, which sent me fast asleep. Happy are the bereaved children whom Providence leads to the harbour of such a home as I had found! Cornelius and his sister lived in a retired way; their tastes were simple; their means moderate; but their home, though quiet, was pleasant like a shady bower, where the waving trees let in ever-new glimpses of the blue sky, with gliding sun beams and many a wandering breeze. There was a genial light and vivacity about them; an endless variety of moods, never degenerating into ill-temper; a pleasant union of shrewdness, simplicity, and originality, which lent a great charm to their daily intercourse. To be with them was to breathe an atmosphere of cheerful, living peace, far removed from the fatal and enervating calmness which makes a pain of repose. I knew them at the least troubled period of their lives. They were the children, by different mothers, of an ambitious and disappointed artist, who had left Ireland ardent with hope, and after vainly struggling against obscurity for a few years, had died in London, poor, miserable, and broken-hearted.