Her husband gasped at the audacity of the idea. Erley Chase! the finest place around, one of the largest properties in the county, and Marianne suggested that he should take it! that he should remove from his fifty- pound house into that stately old pile! The suggestion appalled him, and yet why not? His lawyer assured him that he could afford it; his children were growing up, and he had their future to consider. He thought of his handsome boys, his curly-headed girl, and decided proudly that nothing was too good for them; he looked into the future, and saw his children's children reigning in his stead, and the name of Chester honoured in the land. So Erley Chase was bought, and little Mrs Chester furnished it, as we have seen, to her own great contentment and that of the tradespeople with whom she dealt; and in the course of a few months the family moved into their new abode. At first the country people were inclined to look coldly on the new- comers, but it was impossible to keep up an unfriendly attitude towards Mr and Mrs Chester. They were utterly free from affectation, and, so far from apeing that indifference to wealth adopted by most _nouveaux riches_, were so frankly, transparently enchanted with their new possessions that they were more like a couple of children with a new toy than a steady-going, middle-aged couple. They won first respect, and then affection, and were felt to be a decided acquisition to the well- being of the neighbourhood, since they were never appealed to in vain in the cause of charity. In the days of her own short means, when she had been obliged to look helplessly at the trials of her neighbours, Mrs Chester had solaced herself by dreaming of what she would do if she had money and to spare, and to her credit be it said, she did not forget to put those dreams into execution when the opportunity arose. The days are past when fairy godmothers flash suddenly before our raptured eyes, clad in spangled robes, with real, true wings growing out of their shoulders, but the race is not dead; they appear sometimes as stout little women, in satin gowns and be-feathered bonnets, and with the most prosaic of red, beaming faces. The Chester barouche was not manufactured out of a pumpkin, nor drawn by rats, but none the less had it spirited away many a Cinderella to the longed-for ball, and, when the Prince was found, the fairy godmother saw to it that there was no lack of satin gowns, or glassy slippers. Dick Whittingtons, too, sitting friendless by the roadside, were helped on to fortune; and the Sleeping Beauty was rescued from her dull little home, and taken about to see the world. It is wonderful what fairy deeds can be accomplished by a kind heart and a full purse, and the recipients of Mrs Chester's bounty were relieved from undue weight of obligation by the transparent evidence that her enjoyment was even greater than their own!