that his wife could dance, but he never knew she danced so divinely. At the end of that waltz he asked for another-as a favor, not as a right; and Mrs. Bremmil said: "Show me your program, dear!" He showed it as a naughty little schoolboy hands up contraband sweets to a master. There was a fair sprinkling of "H" on it besides "H" at supper. Mrs. Bremmil said nothing, but she smiled contemptuously, ran her pencil through 7 and 9-two "H's" —and returned the card with her own name written above-a pet name that only she and her husband used. Then she shook her finger at him, and said, laughing: "Oh, you silly, silly boy!"

Mrs. Hauksbee heard that, and-she owned as much-felt she had the worst of it. Bremmil accepted 7 and 9 gratefully. They danced 7, and sat out 9 in one of the little tents. What Bremmil said and what Mrs. Bremmil did is no concern of any one's.

When the band struck up "The Roast Beef of Old England," the two went out into the veranda, and Bremmil began looking for his wife's dandy (this was before 'rickshaw days) while she went into the cloakroom. Mrs. Hauksbee came up and said: "You take me into supper, I think, Mr. Bremmil!" Bremmil turned red and looked foolish: "Ah-h'm! I'm going

home with my wife, Mrs. Hauksbee.

I think there has been a little mistake." Being a man, he spoke as though Mrs. Hauksbee were entirely responsible.

Mrs. Bremmil came out of the cloakroom in a swansdown cloak with a white "cloud" round her head. She looked radiant; and she had a right to.

The couple went off into the darkness together, Bremmil riding very close to the dandy.

Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me-she looked a trifle faded and jaded in the lamplight: "Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool."

Then we went in to supper.

THE LARK'S NEST.

BY AMELIA E. BARR.

The Jay he builds in the high beech top,
When the spring brings flower and vine;
The Thrush in the maples swings his nest,
The Sparrow-Owl builds in the pine-
Very far up where the fresh winds blow,
And the branches rock them to and fro.

The bright wee Wren in the thorny hedge
Has her shelter of wool and leaves;
And the pilgrim Swallow-kin to man-
Dwelleth under the house-top eaves;
And the Oriole hangs her nest so free
Out on the branch of some lofty tree.

The Raven builds mid the old gray rocks
Of some wild unplanted place;

The Eagle challenges with his shriek
The clouds and the empty space.
But all their chatter and song and mirth
Blend with the noise and the stir of earth.

Only the Lark, with his pure fresh song,
Singeth clear at the angels' gate;
Far, far higher than any bird's nest
He singeth both early and late;
Yea, up in the golden clouds he sings,

With his dewy breast and sun-lit wings.

Yet the Lark builds low in the meadow-grass,
Builds under the blowing wheat:
Many birds' nests are over our heads,
But the lark's is down at our feet-
Down where the children's footsteps trod
The blowing grasses and daisied sod.

THE GOLDEN RULE.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT.

I.

The breakfast-room in the vicarage at Leighton-Furness was one of the most cheerful rooms you can imagine, especially at the hour and the meal to which it was devoted. It got all the morning sun, and on a warm morning in May, when the lilacs with which the lawn was surrounded were in full bloom, and the pretty breakfasttable was adorned-as all tables are nowadays--with the flowers of the season, wallflowers golden and brown, with the dew still on them freshly gathered, making a glow of color among the white china, and filling the room with fragrance, you could not have seen a pleasanter place. And the family gathered round the table was in every way suited to the place. First, the vicar, sixty, hale and hearty, with white hair, which was exceedingly becoming to him, and a fine country color speaking of fresh air and much exercise. Second, his wife, Mrs. Wynyard, ten years younger, very well preserved, who had been a handsome woman in her day; and third, Emily, not, perhaps, to be described in these words, but yet a young woman whose looks were not to be despised, and who

would have been an important member of any household in which she had found herself. It was a special providence, Mrs. Wynyard believed, all things considered, that up to this moment her father's house had pleased her more than any other, and that no suitor had carried her away.

For it need scarcely be said that in this pleasant house everything was not pleasant. Had all been well with them the historian would have had nothing to tell; from whence, no doubt, comes the saying, whether appropriated to countries or to wives, that those are the happiest of whom there is nothing to be said. The post had come in just before the moment at which this episode in their lives opens, and the ladies, as was natural, had thrown themselves upon their letters. The vicar, for his part, had opened his newspaper, which is the natural division-I do not say of labor -in the circumstances. For at sixty a man, and especially a clergyman, gets a little indifferent about his correspondence, which is generally more a trouble than a pleasure; whereas a woman's interest in her letters, even when they are about nothing in particular, never fails.

This morning, however, there was some special interest which made even the vicar's absorption in his newspaper a little fictitious. When Mrs. Wynyard and her