The new Mrs. Locke, being a thrifty soul, did not encourage too frequent a use of this wonderful adornment; and, indeed, it was universally felt that the spectacle would somewhat lose in value if it were made too cheap. But little Lizzie, though she was the humblest of her sex, felt a modest glow of pride when she sat beside her husband in the spring-cart; and on Sundays her devotion was somewhat disturbed by the pleasant consciousness that, at sermon time, the glances of the congregation wandered frequently from the countenance of the preacher towards the preternaturally alert orb of her Thomas. THE ROSY PLATE. “Where thy treasure is, there also is thy heart.” WHEN old Maria Stickly had come slowly hobbling down the narrow stairs each morning, and had passed through the rickety door which admitted her into the kitchen, her first glance was directed towards the plate which occupied a prominent and central position on the topmost shelf of the dresser. Hands which had long since mouldered into dust had driven into this shelf the two nails, rusty with age, which kept it from slipping. Maria herself had, many, many years before, constructed the little cloth pad which supported its upper rim; and her first act after lighting the fire and sweeping the tiled floor was to possess herself of this treasure, and carefully and lovingly polish every inch of its already shining surface with a soft cloth kept for the purpose. This plate, the Rosy Plate, as Maria called it, though, in truth, the large crimson flower which sprawled over its centre in the midst of foliage of a kind totally unknown to botanists might just as well have been likened to a peony or a hollyhock, had played a very important part in its owner’s career—in fact, it might have been called the arbiter of her destiny. Maria used to tell the story sometimes when her nearest neighbour, good-natured, overworked Mrs. Andrews, who lived on the top of the hill a mile away, dropped in to rest on her return home after a marketing expedition, the results of which took up so much room in the perambulator that “the twin,” a fine healthy pair of four-year-old boys, the youngest of her family, had to take it by turns to walk. Very hot and tired used poor Mrs. Andrews to be by the time she reached this halting-place, very fractious were the children, the pedestrian hanging on to his mother’s skirts and wailing intermittingly, while the proud occupant of the “pram” kicked viciously at the parcels as they encroached on the space usually allotted to his own fat little legs, and uttered piercing shrieks when his exhausted mother reproved him with certain admonitory but wholly innocuous taps. No wonder that at such times as these Mrs. Stickly’s little cottage appeared a very haven of rest, and the sight of her kind old ruddy face peering out between the geraniums in the little window was as welcome as the face of an angel.