Poor Rachel hesitated. She knew that she should get scolded if she complied; but then, he looked at her with such beseeching eyes--he wished for it so very much. Kindness prevailed over fear; she smiled, and treading softly, led the way up-stairs. As softly, he followed her up into the little back room. Mary was fast asleep; her hands were folded over the coverlet of variegated patchwork; her head lay slightly turned on the white pillow; the frill of her cap softly shaded her pale young face, now slightly flushed with sleep. Her father bent over her with fond love, keeping in his breath. Rachel held the light; she turned her head away, that Mr. Jones might not see her eyes, fest filling with tears. "Oh! my father-- my father!" she thought, "never have you looked so at your child--never --never!" On tip-toe, Mr. Jones softly withdrew, and stole downstairs. "I'd have kissed her," he whispered to Rachel, as she opened the door for him, "but it might have woke her out of that sweet sleep." And away he went, happy to have purchased, by a ten miles walk after a day's hard labour, that look at his sleeping child. "Oh, Lord! how beautiful is the love Thou hast put into the hearts of Thy creature!" thought Rachel Gray; and though it had not been her lot to win that love, the thought was to her so sweet and so lovely, that she bore without repining her expected scolding. "Mrs. Gray had never heard of such a think--never." CHAPTER V. The rich man has his intellect, and its pleasures; he has his books, his studies, his club, his lectures, his excursions; he has foreign lands, splendid cities, galleries, museums, ancient and modern art: the poor man has his child, solitary delight of his hard tasked life, only solace of his cheerless home. Richard Jones had but that one child, that peevish, sickly, fretful little daughter; but she was his all. He was twenty-one, when the grocer in whose shop his youth had been spent, died a bankrupt, leaving one child, a daughter, a pale, sickly young creature of seventeen, called Mary Smith. Richard Jones had veneration large. He had always felt for this young lady an awful degree of respect, quite sufficient of itself to preclude love, had he been one to know this beautiful feeling by more than hearsay --which he was not. Indeed, he never could or would have thought of Mary Smith as something less than a goddess, if, calling at the house of the relative to whom she had gone, and finding her in tears, and, on her own confession, very miserable, he had not felt moved to offer himself, most hesitatingly, poor fellow I for her acceptance.