turning barrel-stomach. For the lesser boys the threepence is placed further up the nose, within easier reach of the little anxiously grabbing hand; and frequent are the cheaply generous petitions proffered by elder lads in behalf of their small companions. “Mightn’t ’e ’ave it a bit nearer, sir? ’e’s only a little chap!” And the rector, in flannels, having laid aside his pompousness with his broadcloth, hot, genial, turning the handle of his wooden steed with right good will, feigning to be inexorable, always accedes. Then, after tea in the tent--tea in whose distribution every one, even to Serena and the poodle, assist; after Orpheus glees sung in the dining-room, comes the crowning final joy of the toboggan. “One! two! three! Are you ready?” The eager scramble up the hillock; the emulous turning round the bag which sits at the top on a sort of milestone; the getting on to your tea-tray; the difficulty of keeping your feet on it--an indispensable condition of success; the mad sliding run down to the grass at the foot--once or twice the impetus carrying the boy divorced from his tray, and landing him on the gravel walk, with barked elbows and shins;--who can wonder that, in comparison with such pleasures, the donkey himself grows pale? The party has been in full swing, before a guest, who, if an oath to appear at it had not been exacted from her, would certainly never have found courage to face it, is seen to be in the midst of associates from whom she has been so long withdrawn. Lavinia is late--a tardiness not to be accounted for by the simplicity of her toilette, since no one knows with what a long delay of backward-looking apology, with what remorseful cryings-out for forgiveness to her “men” for seeming to forget them, she has put off her black gown, and invested herself in the white muslin which feels like a travesty. It is with something of the shamed shyness of one who suddenly finds himself in broad daylight among a party of ordinarily dressed men and women, clad in the extravagance of a fancy garb, that Miss Carew appears among the acquaintances from whom, for over a year, she has held aloof.