ribbons, which was her compromise between the world and her widowhood. Sometimes she went the length of grey and red. I don’t know what innocent prejudice she had to the effect that grey and red betokened still some recondite style of mourning; but such was her prejudice. She would have felt a blue ribbon to be profane. Need I say that she was plump, and had perhaps a little more colour than when she was twenty? But there were few wrinkles upon her pleasant face, and no clouds upon her forehead. She had known grief, innocent and holy, but no trouble of that wearing kind which saps the strength and steals the courage out of life, except that one of which the reader has been told; and that, as he has also been informed, had turned out for the best. Ellinor was the only other member of the family present, except, indeed, a certain small Skye terrier, known by the name of Winks, who was a very important member of the family. As Winks, however, for the present is asleep coiled up in an easy chair, and happily unobservant of what is going on, we may leave him for an after occasion, and pass on to the young lady of the house. What can we say about her? Dear and gentle reader, you know half-a-hundred just like Nelly. She had brown hair, bright, dancing, brown eyes, and a nose which, thanks to Mr. Tennyson, we do not require to describe as _retroussé_. It was “tip-tilted, like the petal of a flower.” As there was not a straight line about her anywhere, this delicate little turn was appropriate. Although, however, it is true that there was no one straight line about the girl, the combination of a hundred soft curves produced a perfect pose of figure, light, firm, and elastic, like--well, like most girls of twenty. What can one say more? Nelly had no settled place like her mother. She was not restless, nor fidgetty, but she was everywhere at once. I don’t know why it was necessary that she should be always in motion--for she never crossed the room or went from one table to another without a reason for it--but somehow there was a perpetual play of movement and variety in every room where she was. Even when she was absorbed in the tranquillity of needlework, the motion of her hand kept things going. She was like a brook: a soft atmosphere of sound and movement--always soft, always pleasant--belonged to her by nature; but, like the brook, she tranquillized the surrounding scenery; or, like a bird, making the quietness seem more complete by its flitting from one branch to another, and delicious trying over of its favourite notes. Nelly was not alarmingly good, nor perfect in any way I know of; but she fulfilled this mission of the girl, which I fear, among greater aims, is falling a little into disrepute--she filled the whole house with her youth, her brightness, her gaiety, her overflowing life. No great demands of any kind had yet been made upon her. Whether she would be capable of responding to them when they came, no one could tell; but in the