“Yes, dear,” with a sigh, “it was only make believe nonsense,” and she did not say another word about that fancy of hers, but began questioning him about last night’s debate. That was just her way to forget herself and follow his bent. No wonder he could not do without her, and was restless and ill at ease if she were unavoidably absent. I wonder he understood in the least what she meant by wishing him to be poor. No doubt her innocent fancy had constructed a home where no uncongenial anxieties or ambition should sever her from her children, where she should be all in all to them as well as to her husband. I daresay she imagined herself no longer burthened with wearisome receptions, but sitting working in the shade of the little porch while her children made daisy chains on the lawn of that humble abode. The mother would undress her children and hear them say their little prayers. Hark! was not that a click of the gate? Father has come home. How late you are, Alick; the children are asleep; you must kiss them without waking them. Hush, what nonsense, she is dreaming. Alick would be in the Cabinet; people were prophesying that already. She must take up her burthen again and follow him up the steep hill of fame. What if her woman’s heart fainted sometimes, women must do their work in life, as she would do hers. The next day the mother’s place was empty in the nursery. “Mrs. Morton was with her husband in the library,” Travers told us. Later on we heard she was driving. Just as I was putting Reggie, half asleep, in his cot, she came up to wish the children good-night, but she did not stay with us ten minutes. I remarked that she looked very ill and exhausted. “Oh, I am only a little tired,” she returned, hurriedly; “I have been paying calls all the afternoon, trying to make up for my idle week, and the talking has tired me. Never mind, it is all in the day’s work.” And she nodded to me kindly and left the room. (_To be continued._) [Illustration] CHRISTMAS GIFTS. With the approach of Christmas and Christmas gifts, the cares of the girl members of a large family may be said to arrive at a crisis. There is no girl so friendless or so heartless that there is no one she loves or wishes to remind of that love at this season, while there are many surrounded by affectionate relations and true friends, whose love they warmly return, and whom they wish to please with a gift, and yet have but a small sum at command, and must think carefully over its division.