charms to her infantine beauty. She was the idol of her parents, the delight of her elder sisters, the plaything of the servants, and, above all, the cherished pet of Ernest Melvyn. Hour after hour would he sit with Mary nestled upon his knee, while he displayed to her wondering gaze the beautiful engravings in her father’s costly volumes, or traced on her little slate many a rough but spirited sketch of castle and cottage, to be effaced and renewed with every childish whim. He carved fairy baskets of cherry-pits, fashioned clay models of Indian figures, and practiced, for the gratification of his favorite, those thousand little devices which can be accomplished by a skilful hand, good taste and patience. When infancy gave place to childhood, with its increasing cares, it was Ernest Melvyn who became the confidant of all little Mary’s anxieties and pleasures. It was he who wrought out the tedious sum, and explained the wonderfully abstruse rules of that hated grammar, and aided her in remembering those troublesome chronological tables, and, in short, removed every stumbling-block, while he lightened every burden of her school life. In the mean time Mr. Allison’s elder daughters were growing up to womanhood, as beautiful as they were gentle and good. Their personal attractions, their gracefully feminine characters, and the known wealth of their father, all contributed to draw around them a crowd of admirers, whose motives were as various as their minds. Amid such persons Ernest never mingled. Retiring in his manners, and humble in his feelings, he never obtruded himself into the gay circle which gradually formed itself around the young ladies. His visits were as frequent as ever, but his evenings were usually passed in the library, aiding Mary in her lessons, giving her such primary instructions in drawing, as his fine but uncultivated taste would permit, or reading some useful book, which, if rather above the child’s comprehension, was yet listened to with pleasure because Ernest was the reader. Mr. Allison beheld with pleasure the innocent attachment which existed between them. He believed it to be an advantage to both, since it gave Mary a new impulse and aid to mental cultivation, while it preserved Ernest from many of the temptations which assail the youth of a large city; and even the prudence of age could see nothing to fear from the affection which had thus been awakened in the days of infancy. But the love which had thus sprung up between the child of four summers, and the boy of sixteen, had lost none of its tenderness when Mary could count her twelfth birthday. “How I love,” says the Ettrick Shepherd, “how I love a little girl of twelve;” and those who have made children a study will heartily agree with him. It is the sweetest of all ages, the loveliest of all periods in woman’s life: because it is perhaps the only season when the developing mind and expanding heart display their beautiful feminine