their moral diseases by the administration of a hundred a year. In some round-about ways he had put the idea to the proof, and not always with satisfactory results. He held as an article of faith--nobody could guess where he found it--that there were people in the world who could go straighter in prosperity than in adversity. He never would believe that adversity was a thing to be suffered. He had replied to a Protestant divine on that subject, illustrated in the case of a starving family, that that might be, only it was no concern of his, and he would not act upon the theory. And the result was a thriving, thankful family in Australia, to whom Mr. Brewer was always, ever after, sending valuable commodities, and receiving flower-seeds and skins of gaudy feathered birds in return. Mr. Brewer had a daughter, Claudia was her name. "A Bible name," said Mr. Brewer, and bowed his head, and felt he had done his duty by the girl. What more could he do? She went to school, and was at school when he was paying money in Mrs. Morier's parlor. She was then ten years old; and being a clever child, she had, in the holidays just over, chosen to talk French, and nothing else, to a friend whom she had been allowed to bring with her. A thing that had caused great perturbation in the soul of her honest father, who prayed in a wordless, but real anxiety, that the Bible name might not be thrown away on the glib-tongued little gipsy. It will be perceived that Claudia was a difficulty. Now, when Mr. Brewer was gone out of Mrs. Morier's house, the mother took up the money, wiped her eyes, and said, "What a good boy George was." And Mary said "_Yes;_" and knew in her heart that if there had been any chance of George living, Mr. Brewer would never have done _that_. George died. There was money, just enough for all wants. Lucia came home engaged to the married to Mr. Erskine. And when she was gone there went with her a certain seven hundred pounds, her fortune, settled--what a silly mockery Mr. Erskine thought it--on her children. The loss made the two who were left very poor. Lucia sent her mother gifts, but the regular and to be reckoned on eight-and-twenty pounds a year were gone. She who had eaten, drank, and dressed was gone too--but still it was a loss; and Mary and her mother were poor. Also, Mary had long been engaged to be married to the son of a younger branch of a great county family house, Lansdowne Lorimer by name. He was in an attorney's office in Marston. In that old-world place, the attorney, himself of a county family, was a great man. It was hard to see Lucia marry a man of money and land, young Lorimer thought, so he advised Mary to assert their independence of all earthly considerations, and marry too. And they did so.