inscription upon it was no longer discernible. I remembered so well every incident of that day that I could see myself carried out of the churchyard in Snaggletooth's arms, and I closed my eyes as I thought how I fell asleep there. These scenes and remembrances soothed and consoled me; I seemed to be lifted out of a fever of unrest. Gradually my mother's eyes grew accustomed to see me working always at my table, and they began to dwell on me, at first unconcernedly, but presently with a kind of struggling observance in them. I hailed this change with gladness, and waited and hoped, and prayed humbly night and morning. Josey West wrote to me regularly, and one day this letter came: 'My dear Chris,--Don't open the packet enclosed in this until you read my letter. If you do, I'll haunt you, and you shall never have a minute's rest again. You told me once that every person in life has a proper groove. I think it very hard that I should have lived all these years without, until now, falling into _my_ proper groove; I am in it at last, but I am ready to slap all the children's faces to think that so many years have been wasted. I was born to be a grocer, and at last a grocer I am. If you can find me a better one than I am, show him to me, and I'll resign. I've been looking over your uncle's books, and, as true as I'm a living woman, I'm taking more money than ever he took, if his figures are right. Every day I make a new customer. There's Mrs. Simpson, the bricklayer's wife, at No. 9. If she's been in the shop once, she's been in it a dozen times to-day and yesterday: all the years the old gentleman kept the shop she didn't spend two-and-twopence in it--that's the sum she mentioned, and as I'm a woman of figures now, I must be precise. She does so like a gossip, she says, and she don't mind getting short weight, she says, so long as she can have a friendly word with her quarter of a pound of moist, and her two ounces of the best mixture. She tried all she knew to get the old gentleman to gossip with her, and as he wouldn't, she wouldn't deal with him. Mrs. Simpson is not the only one. There's Mrs. Primmins, and Mrs. Sillitoe, the butcher's wife, and Mrs. Macnamara, who takes snuff. They all like a gossip, and they all come to have it, and so long as they buy their groceries of me, I shall encourage them. Why, you'd be surprised to see the old shop sometimes! It's quite an Institution.