believe! You got the silk at Mr. Price's, I dare say; ah, yes, four and threepence a yard, the very same." It was almost as intolerable to be pointed out to every morning caller as "one of poor sister Kate's children. A terrible large family!-left quite unprovided, so that she took her entirely out of charity." Poor Rosina learnt "how salt is the savour of another person's bread, and how hard it is to climb another person's stairs." Often the burning tears moistened her daily portion of needlework; and often they wetted her sleepless pillow as she lay thinking of the home, despised, as it seemed, by all others, but dear beyond measure to her who had been sent from it to prove the wretchedness of splendid dependence. Not unfrequently she was deprived of her only consolation, the society of the young Penningtons, till she had humbled herself for some real or imaginary fault, which, to a temper like hers, was gall and wormwood. Rosina attained her twelfth year, and her disposition appeared to be growing reckless and sullen. Her letters to her mother were always submitted to the censorship of Mrs. Parkinson, whose temper was not ameliorated by time, while Mr. Parkinson was

of too passive a nature to attempt interference ; and Mrs. Diana, if not so cross, was even more formal and fidgetty than her niece. Affairs at length came to a crisis. Rosina took an extraordinary resolution and acted upon it. She ran away!

Her aider and abettor in this daring step was Lewis Pennington. He it was who, fired by the recital of her wrongs at a moment when her heart was full almost to bursting, declared that if he were in her place, he would endure such tyranny no longer, shewed the feasibility of a return to Summerfield, lent her a guinea to pay her coach hire, hailed the stage as it passed the shrubbery gate, saw her safely placed in it, wished her good luck and called out "all right." He returned to the rectory with the bold confidence of a boy of fifteen, not without a spice of mischief in his composition, and ready to endure whatever punishment might await him for having freed innocence from thraldom; while Rosina, terrified almost out of her senses at the hardihood of the enterprize, yet trembling with delight at her emancipation, shrank into one of the corners of the stage as it passed the lodge of Park Place, and turned pale with alarm

when it drew up at the inn to receive parcels and passengers. The door was abruptly opened, and she started, with the apprehensiveness of guilt, in the expectation of seeing some member of her uncle's household; but it was only the coachman, who jerked in a brown paper parcel and then remounted his box. They clattered over the bridge which separated Stoke Barton from the adjoining parish; trees, houses, and steeples faded in the distance; and the agitated girl began to hope that now, unless some very cross accident indeed should happen, she was beyond the reach of pursuit; but there was still sufficient uncertainty hanging over her fate to prevent her feeling comfortable. The possibility of her mother's displeasure haunted her mind, and by the time she had reached Summerfield, this source of apprehension had worked her up to such a state of agitation that, on entering the room where Mrs. Wellford and Hannah sat at tea, she could only reply to their eager and anxious inquiries by a torrent of tears. When at length she could speak articulately, she gave an account of all her grievances, the recapitulation of which again choked her utterance, and she murmured an almost inau

dible request that her mother would not send her again to Park Place.

"To Park Place?" repeated Mrs. Wellford, whose cheek glowed with a hectic colour, "No, Rosina, did I even wish it, there is no likelihood that your aunt would receive you again. The doors of that house we may consider as closed against us for ever. You have certainly acted daringly and imprudently in taking so important a step as quitting a home in which your friends had placed you; however, that is past now and cannot be recalled. You have, I fear, been injudiciously treated, and now that we are once more united, no consideration on earth shall tempt me to consent to a second separation. It has been painful enough to both of us."

Tears fell from the mother's eyes, as she stooped to kiss Rosina's cheek. "I hope your future conduct will prove to me," said she, "that what has passed has been more attributable to adverse circumstances, and your aunt's imperfect knowledge of the management of children, than to the hastiness of your own temper."

Rosina sighed, and secretly resolved that whatever the faults of that temper had hitherto

been, they should be seen no more; and now that the dreaded explanation had taken place, and she was received into favour, she had leisure to kiss Hannah again, and observe with wonder how much she was grown and improved.

Hannah was at this time between sixteen and seventeen; and like Thomson's rural heroine,

"Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self."

It might be said of her features that they reminded you of the Grecian contour, though not strictly conformable to it; and they completely harmonized with the calm, pure, and chastened spirit that shone through them. Her countenance, if seldom radiant with vivacity, was generally smiling and tranquil; and her dark blue eyes, if they did not sparkle with genius, at least beamed with intelligence and sweetness.

Hannah was as much struck with Rosina's growth as Rosina was with Hannah's beauty; and now that "the absent had returned, the long, long lost was found," there was much to be told and enquired into on both sides. Rosina enjoyed the consciousness of being once more at home, though every thing looked very small to her, and