that my ardent devotion was not unreciprocated. Still, I had not pluck enough to make any serious advances, much less to put the all-important question, although I had plenty of opportunities, as Mrs. Mountjoy, being of a ponderous physique, was not given to much active exercise, and Enid and I were left constantly alone.

'At length the period of my holiday was drawing to a close, and I felt that if the step was to be taken it must be taken soon.

'Enid had a hobby: she suffered from acrostics on the brain. Every week a pile of papers arrived from England-society papers which Mrs. Mountjoy devoured for their fashionable news, and Enid for their acrostics, and her excitement every week, as the lists of correct solvers appeared, was amusing to me who had hitherto regarded acrostics as simple puzzles for young folk.

"But when I was introduced to the formidable array of reference books, quotation books, gazetteers, geographical, bibliographical, and other dictionaries, when I often found Enid with a severe frown seated at a table littered with papers, I began to think that, after all, there must be something in them.

'One evening after dinner she said

"Oh, I would give anything to find out this light! It's the last acrostic of the quarter, and I'm already well up for a prize, and I do so want to beat "Mrs. Mums" and "Nil Desperandum," who are old solvers and are always winning prizes. Do look at it, Mr. Jones, and see if you can make anything out of it.”

'I took up the paper and looked at the acrostic as if it were a Telegu poem or a native edition of the Koran, and I read out

Ancient name of English town,
Something very near a crown.

""You see," said Enid, "the sides are 'Radical that this light must begin with R and end with M. the rest, but this beats me."

Members,' so
I've done all

'I murmured the lines a score of times with a profound air, but the more I thought the farther was I from solving their meaning.

'A sudden idea struck me. know it. I'll write and ask him. "Miss Mountjoy, didn't you

find this out?"

Smith the Bore will be sure to
So I said in a low voice-
say you would give anything to

"Yes, that I would; anything in reason," she replied. "Then," said I, stealing her hand and a glance at Mrs. Mountjoy, who was dozing over the "World," "suppose I ask you toto give me your heart and hand?"

6

Enid blushed and said nothing: her hand was actually in my

possession, so would be her heart if the Bore sent me back a right

answer.

'I stole away to my hotel and hastily scribbled as follows:-""My dear Smith,-You will think I'm resuming a long-interrupted friendship for very interested reasons. But I can't help it; and when I tell you that my future happiness depends on your answer, I am sure you will do all in your power to help me. What English town in olden times was known by a name beginning with R and ending with M? Something about a crown? Please answer by return if you can.-Yours very truly,

"HAROLD JONES."

'The answer came in due course from his City office.

""My dear Jones,-Only too delighted to do you a service. The town to which you refer is Chichester, anciently called Regnum, which I need not tell you is the Latin for kingdom; hence the allusion to crown.

"Regnum stood on the Stane Street, a continuation of the Ermine Street, one of the four great Roman roads. It ran through Halnaker and Bignor and Pulborough and Billingshurst"

'I read no more, for the old fellow went on to describe the whole course of the Stane Street to London; but with a beaming face presented myself at Mrs. Mountjoy's apartments.

""Eureka!" I exclaimed, as I entered. "The town is Regnum, Miss Mountjoy, now known as Chichester."

'What followed need not be detailed; suffice it to say that I left their hotel the betrothed of Enid Mountjoy, subject to the approval of papa.

'So eager was I to learn the verdict of this final court of appeal that I travelled to England with Miss Mountjoy and her mother, and put them into the train en route for a pleasant Kentish village whereto I was to go next week.

'It may be imagined that at the day and hour named I was at the little rustic station.

""Can you tell me where Mr. Mountjoy lives?" I asked of the station-master.

"Mountjoy, sir-Mountjoy! Don't know the name at all, and I've been here ever since the line was opened," replied the official. 'A sudden chill came over me. Had I made a mistake in the name of the place? Was it possible that there were two places of the same name? A more horrible thought came over me which I almost blush to record, that I had been made the victim of a heartless hoax; that my goddess was none but a Siren. Perish the

66

thought! I muttered, and drew out the address Mrs. Mountjoy had given me. Naseby, Harrietsham, Kent," and showed it to the station-master.

666 "Lor, yes, sir,” he exclaimed." Mr. Smith lives there, he do. Left-hand road, sir, just against the Old Pilgrim Road, sir."

"But," I said, confused, "Mountjoy was the name given me." "Werry likely, sir," said the official with a grin, “if it was given by the mamma, sir. You see, sir, she's very proud and 'igh, sir; you'll excuse my saying it, sir. And as the name of Smith is rather common, sir, she allus travels by some swell name. year it were Fitz-Simmons, sir. It's all right, sir."

Last

'Greatly relieved, I thanked the station-master and hastened along in the direction indicated. In a short time I came to a substantial-looking old Queen Anne house standing in its own grounds. I had scarcely passed through the lodge gates, when I heard a well-known and well-beloved voice exclaim

"Here he is, papa! here he is!" and Enid, all radiant with health and beauty, appeared in company with-whom do you think?' 'Smith the Bore?' I hazarded.

'Right you are,' said Jones. 'And you may imagine what a laugh we had over it all. Of course he accepted me as his future son-in-law, and I've never had reason since to regret that I formed a friendship with the old fellow. And so you see, if he'd never had his hobby, I should never have been able to keep Enid.'

' And when I come down to see you,' I said, 'I must be careful not to blurt out anything about that Bore Smith!'

FRANK ABELL.

'The Wearing of the Green.'

BY BASIL, AUTHOR OF LOVE THE DEBT.'

When laws can stop the blades of grass

From growing as they grow;

And when the flowers in summer time
Their colours daren't show:

Why then I'll change the colour that
I wear in my caubeen;

But, till that day, please God, I'll stick
To the Wearing of the Green.

CHAPTER IX.

POLITICS.

In general the nobility, citizens, and country people of Portugal are rude blockheads, incapable of good manners, and ignorant. And this in spite of their pretension to be the wisest ; like the English, who admire no other people so much as their own. The Portuguese, except the nobility, are much more loyal to each other and to their king than are the English; they are not so cruel and brutal as the latter; they are more moderate in eating and drinking, but more ugly in face.--Travels of Nicolus de Popielovo (1484).

THE way in which his host put himself out to entertain him excited in Mr. Summers another feeling beside that of gratitude -a mixed feeling, which we cannot express precisely in one word. The hospitality was not English; no English host would put himself out as much for his dearest friend as Miles Wyndham had for a casual stranger. Yet the English were the most hospitable people in the world. Therefore, there must have been something besides a mere impulse of hospitality to account for Miles Wyndham's generous reception of him. This something Mr. Summers was at no loss to discover, though he might have been at a loss to define it. It was certainly not that his host thought him a good match for his daughter, since the father plainly regarded his daughter as the merest child. Putting aside this motive altogether, and that of hospitality in part, there remained the eagerness to win the good opinion of one of a higher civilisation and race which Englishmen met with in every quarter of the world—in France even, even in Germany; and, à fortiori, in Ireland. Now, deference of this kind often defeats itself-provokes the contempt it was designed to disarm. And, perhaps, it had in some measure this effect upon Mr. Summers. Not even his love for Norah could blind him to the fact that his host's ideas and ideals, mode of life and thought, were not English. His very eagerness to please and oblige were un-English. At least, no English gentleman

could be so civil. No doubt there were Englishmen whose respect for themselves was not high enough to prevent their showing an excess of respect for others; but they were not gentlemen. Now, Miles Wyndham was beyond all question a gentleman; but—not an English gentleman. This Mr. Summers had to admit in spite of--or rather because of his host's devotion of himself to his service. In fact, as we have already said, this very bribe, offered to avert Mr. Summers's adverse decision, really provoked it.

But if Mr. Summers was compelled to feel something akin to contempt for his host's excess of civility, it was a very kindly contempt. Miles Wyndham was a good fellow, if ever there was one, and Norah's father to boot; and, therefore, Mr. Summers might well condone a cordiality which, though un-English and undignified, was very engaging.

Now his guest might have stayed a year in his house before it could have occurred to Miles that his hospitality was construed in this manner. He really was not laying himself out to win the approval of the representative of a supreme race and civilisation; for he would have shown the same hospitality to a belated and benighted Frenchman or German, or even Irishman. He couldn't help being hospitable; nor, if he showed in his hospitality an undignified and un-English disregard of himself, could he help that either. But his hospitality-though it fell far below the ideal standard with which Mr. Summers compared it--was at least disinterested. It was not aimed to propitiate English approval.

But if Miles didn't understand Mr. Summers's point of viwe, Father Mac did. He had been educated abroad, had lived for a few years in England, and had had altogether a very wide and varied experience of men and manners. Of his experience he had made the most. Shrewd by nature, and by fortune forced to be a mere looker-on at the game of life, he saw things with the proverbial clearness of mere on-lookers. Notwithstanding, however, these advantages of nature, experience, and position, Father Mac, from national prejudice, perhaps, though he understood, did not altogether accept, Mr. Summers's ideas. He did not think that in the Darwinian race, from the starting-post of the brutes to the goal of the angels, the English were the first, and the Irish the last, of all civilised races. He had known both races in the rough-the English agricultural labourer and the Irish-and on the whole he considered that the English peasant, notwithstanding centuries of fair and fostering treatment, was more akin to the brute than the Irish peasant after centuries of such ferocious ill-usage as no other nation had ever suffered from a civilised conqueror. The English agricultural labourer in Father Mac's experience was almost with