manner, is curved inward. Were it not for the
respite and the liberty accorded at night—
which mitigate but do not remove the evil—
the feet of Englishmen and more especially of
Englishwomen, who cramp them in order that
they may appear small and pretty, would be as
little serviceable for wholesome exercise as
those of the Chinese ladies, whom we all agree
to laugh at; seeing the mote in our neighbour's
eyes, but not in our own. It has been cynically
suggested that the boot and shoemakers
are in league with the chiropodists and doctors
to damage our health by means of our feet;
and that they are allowed a per-centage by the
profession, for the callosities which they create
by the faulty construction of our nether
integuments. But cynics are privileged to believe
the worst of everything and everybody; and
doubtless the Crispins, great and small, would
be quite as willing to make boots and shoes on
natural principles, so as to allow for the healthful
play and motion of the foot, as to make unnatural
ones, if Fashion and Custom would but
run in that direction. But Custom is like the
mountain, not to be moved by the blast of a
trumpet; and Fashion is more obstinate in
having its own way, in spite of reason and
remonstrance, than all the mules, pigs, and
asses that ever existed since the creation of the
world.

I end in the spirit with which I began.
Better a clean hand than a dirty glove; better
bare feet than clouted shoon and ragged stockings;
and better, far better, feet such as Nature
intended, than the feet which we owe to Fashion
and the bootmakers.

        THE BROWN-PAPER PARCEL.

       IN FIVE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER III.

TROUBLES and cares had vanished like
a dream of the night, when Mary awoke
before dawn, to hear her own dear village
bells pealing out their welcome to Christmas
Eve, and awoke to the glad consciousness
that she was really at home. "Rejoice
in the Lord daily, and again I say rejoice,"
was the text that rose in her mind, setting
itself to the tune of those joy-bells all the
time she was dressing, with noiseless
movements not to disturb the sleeping Cilla.
Her morning prayer over, she stole downstairs,
and betook herself to the kitchen,
where the one sleepy little school-girl who
formed the whole of the domestic staff was
lighting the fire. When Mr. Mackworth
came down, it was to hear his daughter's
happy voice singing carols, as she bent all
her energies to the arrangement of as
tempting a breakfast as the simple materials
were capable of making. Mrs. Mackworth,
resting in the happy assurance that
"her eldest" was now at home to see to
everything, was able to enjoy an extra
hour of well-earned rest. When Cilla
appeared, shivering and miserable, long after
every one else had begun breakfast, even
her piteous little face brightened at sight
of the daintily spread breakfast table and
the good fire; and she condescended to
express approval of the crisp toast which
Mary had prepared for her. It never
occurred to any one, apparently, that her
appetite might have been better, and her
hands and feet less frozen, if she likewise
had been bestirring herself to help in the
thousand and one household tasks which
there were so few to perform. Mary
would have been the last to entertain so
sacrilegious and disloyal an idea; for, ever
since she was herself a sturdy brown child of
six, and Cilla a delicate golden-haired fairy
of three, she had learnt to consider that hers
was the useful, and her sister's the ornamental,
department in life— a theory which the
little lady herself had thoroughly adopted.
It was as a matter of course that she sank
after breakfast into the solitary arm-chair,
with her feet on the fender, looking all that
was graceful and pretty (in spite of rather
untidy hair, and clothes which would have
been the better for a little more brushing
and mending) while her mother betook
herself to her eternal mending of hose and
clothes, and Mary flitted about, here, there,
and everywhere, in her oldest dress, neat
through all its shabbiness, rapidly and
quietly establishing order and comfort,
wherever she went.

There is no need to write in detail the
history of the next few days. The curate's
family came in for no Christmas gaieties,
and for a very scanty amount of Christmas
cheer: but they were busy in ministering to
the comfort and pleasure of all the poor
around them, and even Cilla roused up into
fitful interest.

Each busy day was followed by a cheery
evening. The curate would then rouse
himself out of his usual gravity, and prove
the truth of "his children's old saying, that,
when he liked, nobody could be such fun
as papa. And Harry and Mary and Cilla
all chattered at once, and the gentle mother
smiled and listened, and Jack and Laurry
got between everybody and the fire, and
were ordered to bed, and refused to go: and
altogether it was very pleasant. For whatever
their faults might be, these people
thoroughly loved and believed in each other,
and even Cilla would with all her heart have
endorsed the proverb, that "Home is Home,
be it never so homely."

"Mary!" she exclaimed one darkening
afternoon, nearly a week after Christmas
mas Day: "here is this mysterious