Mrs. Ransom has a little boy named Tommy, and Mrs. Villiers has a similar sized son, who struggles under the cognomen of Wickliffe Morgan; and it will happen, because these two children are too young to grasp fully the grave responsibilities of life—it will happen, I repeat, that they will come together in various respects. If Mrs. Ransom is so fortunate as to first observe one of these cohesions, she promptly steps to the door, and, covertly waiting until Mrs. Villiers’s door opens, she shrilly observes—“Thomas Jefferson, come right into this house this minute! How many times have I told you to keep away from that Villiers brat?” “_Villiers brat!_” What a stab that is! What subtle poison it is saturated with! Poor Mrs. Villiers’s breath comes thick and hard; her face burns like fire, and her eyes almost snap out of her head. She has to press her hand to her heart as if to keep that organ from bursting; there is no relief from the dreadful throbbing and the dreadful pain. The slamming of Mrs. Ransom’s door shuts out all hope of succour. But it quickens Mrs. Villiers’s faculties, and makes her so alert, that when the two children come together again, which they very soon do, she is first at the door. Now is the opportunity to heap burning coals on the head of Mrs. Ransom. She heaps them. “Wickliffe Morgan! what are you doing out there with that Ransom imp? Do you want to catch some disease? Come in here before I skin you.” And the door slams shut, and poor Mrs. Ransom, with trembling form and bated breath and flashing eyes, clinches her fingers, and glares with tremendous wrath over the landscape. And in the absence of any real, tangible information as to the loss of that hoop, this is perhaps the very best that can be done on either side. _J. M. Bailey._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _THE STOUT GENTLEMAN._ A TALE OF MYSTERY. [Illustration: “IT WAS A RAINY SUNDAY.” “I’ll cross it, though it blast me!”—_Hamlet._]