A clever mother would have found out this grave and ominous component of the child's character--would have interpreted the absence of the thoughtless extravagance, so charming, if sometimes so trying, of childhood--would have been quick to have noticed that Marian asked, "What will it cost?" and gravely entered into mental calculation on occasions when other children would have demanded the purchase of a coveted article clamorously, and shrieked if it were refused. But Mrs. Ashurst was not a clever mother--she was only a loving, indulgent, rather helpless one; and the little Marian's careful ways were such a practical comfort to her, while the child was young, that it never occurred to her to investigate their origin, to ask whether such a very desirable and fortunate effect could by possibility have a reprehensible, dangerous, insidious cause. Marian never wasted her pennies, Marian never spoiled her frocks, Marian never lost or broke anything; all these exceptional virtues Mrs. Ashurst carefully noted and treasured in the storehouse of her memory. What she did not notice was, that Marian never gave anything away, never voluntarily shared any of her little possessions with her playfellows, and, when directed to do so, complied with a reluctance which all her pride, all her brave dread of the appearance of being coerced, hardly enabled her to subdue, and suffered afterwards in an unchildlike way. What she did not observe was, that Marian was not to be taken in by glitter and show; that she preferred, from the early days in which her power of exhibiting her preference was limited by the extent of the choice which the toy-merchant---who combined hardbake and hairdressing with ministering to the pleasures of infancy--afforded within the sum of sixpence. If Marian took any one into her confidence, or asked advice on such solemn occasions--generally ensuing on a protracted hoarding of the coin in question--it would not be by the questions, "Is it the prettiest?" "Is it the nicest?" but, "Do you think it is worth sixpence?" and the child would look from the toy to the money, held closely in the shut palm of her chubby hand, with a perturbed countenance, in which the pleasure of the acquisition was almost neutralised by the pain of the payment--a countenance in which the spirit of barter was to be discerned by knowing eyes. But none such took note of Marian's childhood. The illumination of love is rather dazzling than searching in the case of mothers of Mrs. Ashurst's class, and she was dazzled. Marian was perfection in her eyes, and at an age at wthe inversion of the relations between mother and daughter, common enough in later life, would have appeared to others unreasonable, preposterous, Mrs. Ashurst surrendered herself wholly, happily, to the guidance and the care of her daughter. The inevitable self-assertion of the stronger mind took place, the inevitable submission of the weaker. In this instance, a gentle, persuasive,