three other lurking pin-points which made themselves visible about her face. Her eyes were delightful in their surprise. She had a great deal of smooth, brown hair, brushed to the perfection of neatness, which was wound in a thick plait round the back of her head. Altogether, though there was no beauty about her, she was such a woman as gives comfort to a house from the very sight of her; a woman of ready hand and ready wit, and plenty of sense, but no more intellect than is necessary for comfort--which perhaps is not saying very much. Her presence in an empty house would have half furnished it at once, and she could say her say on all subjects she knew. About that brown colt she had formed an opinion of her own, which, as his chimed in with it, appeared extraordinarily sensible to Philip Selby: and she knew as much about all farming operations, and especially those which were connected with her own sphere of the dairy, as any farmer round. She was not, as the reader has perceived, a woman at all timid about her own opinions, or unwilling to express them. But when Mrs. Joscelyn and the new visitor talked about literature, and the pleasures of reading, Joan listened with open eyes and lips, and a broad smile of ignorant and admiring pleasure. “Think of mother talking away thirteen to the dozen! and who’d have thought she had all that in her,” Joan said to herself. As for Mrs. Joscelyn, her cheeks were pink all the evening after, and her eyes quite bright. “I have not had so much conversation for years. Dear, dear! how it does one good, after never seeing anybody that has ever opened a book, to get a good talk with a well-informed person! I hope Harry will take to Mr. Selby,” Mrs. Joscelyn cried; “what a chance for him, Joan! a man that really knows; and will give him such good advice--and so good for Liddy, too, when she comes home.” Joan acquiesced in all this, with a laugh. “It was as good as a play to hear you,” she said, “and me gaping all the time, saying to myself, ‘I never knew mother had so much in her!’” At this Mrs Joscelyn drew herself up a little; but she was not displeased with the praise. “I read a great deal when I was young,” she said. “Papa always insisted upon it. You have not had my advantages, Joan; but you have strong sense, my dear, which, perhaps, I never had.” “I daresay I will do, mother,” said Joan, with another laugh. She admired her mother’s cleverness with a kind of amused delight; but the idea of being less valued than her mother did not enter Joan’s head. It made her laugh, with a comfortable sense of practical superiority. “I’ll do,” she repeated, smiling broadly, all the dimples showing in her cheeks. She had a good deal of colour. Mrs. Joscelyn’s fragile looks and elegant extracts were alike out of Joan’s way.