brown-paper parcel lying on the chimney-piece.
I have been dying all this afternoon to open
it. Wasn't I honourable not to do it?"

Mary had just returned from some parish
visiting, and Cilla, who considered herself
to have a cold, was lounging in the
armchair with a novel which Mrs. Halroyd had
lent her governess to read on the journey
home.

"Oh! Let us open it by all means," Mary
said, "only I will light the candle first, and
draw the curtains, my dear; you must be
killing your eyes reading by fire-light!"

As she trimmed the fire, and proceeded
to close the shutters and light the candle,
Cilla seized the parcel and attacked the
string. Of course she could not break it,
and she began a raid on Mary's work-
basket, but her sister stopped her. Not
even to gratify Cilla's curiosity would Mary
allow her best pair of scissors to be spoilt
by cutting string.

"Particular old thing!" Cilla called her,
with a little impatient shrug.

"But my dear, my best scissors! My only
useable pair! If you'll wait one minute till
I light the candle, I'll fetch a knife from
the kitchen."

Cilla turned it in her mind whether to
go herself, but gave up the idea with a
shiver, and applied herself to unfastening
the knots.

"What do you suppose it can be, Mary?
A fairy godmother's gift perhaps—eh?"

"A wishing-cap," said Mary, laughing.
"Oh! Dear, what a useful possession that
would be, Cilla. It shouldn't be a case of
black puddings with us."

"Nice rooms and pretty things, and a
pony carriage that I could drive myself,"
said Cilla, with a sigh through all her jesting
speech.

"A living for papa, and a commission
for Harry, and Harrow or Rugby for the
boys!"

"And what for yourself? For your very
own self?"

"Quite myself, and nobody else mixed up
with it? Really, I don't know. I am very
lucky, I think I have everything. Oh! I
suppose I should give up governessing,
if I were quite sure my dear old Archie
would get somebody for his governess who
wouldn't be cross to him over those sums of
his."

"And to go to the Nettlehurst ball?
Come, Polly, I've heard you wish for that."

"Ah!To be sure! I forgot: and to be quite
convinced that my polite unknown did not
catch cold. There, Cilla," as she finished
putting the room into its usual evening
trim, "your patience shall be rewarded!
I am going to fetch a knife."

"No, you need not: I have undone this
knot now: the first I ever undid in my life,
I think. Now, Polly!"

Mary came and knelt by her as she broke
the seals, and unwound the packthread.
Out fell a tightly folded roll of thin white
paper.

Cilla gave a little half-laughing cry of
disappointment: but Mary knew better the
look of the article, and she pounced on it
with an exclamation of astonishment.

"Bank-notes! How strange! Where can
they possibly come from? One, two, three,
ten notes! Oh, Cilla, how wonderful!"

"What are they? Five-pound notes?
Ten-pound notes?"

"Thousand pound notes! Ten of them,
Cilla!" and the brown eyes looked as if they
never would close again.

"A wishing-cap indeed!" cried Cilia.

Mary carried off the bank-notes to the
dingy little second sitting-room, where her
father was generally to be found at this
hour: for under such tremendous circumstances,
Saturday though it was, she ventured
to interrupt his sermon.

Mr. Mackworth was as surprised as his
daughter, but less bewildered, and
considerably less excited.

"Has it not struck you, my dear, that
this money may belong to the gentleman
who was so polite to you? Don't you think
it probable that he may have left it in the
cab, and that you may have taken it out
with your other parcels?"

"But, papa, would any one carry about
ten thousand pounds in this way? And
then forget it? It doesn't seem credible."

"It is the only explanation I can see,
however. And I think we must try to draw
up an advertisement for the Times, which
the owner would understand and nobody
else. And now give me these things, and
let me finish my sermon in peace."

Mary obeyed; but her father called her
back to caution her against talking on the
subject before the children or the servant.

"It is just as well," he said, "that all the
world should not know that we have ten
thousand pounds locked up in my table
drawer." So nothing was said about it
during tea; but when the boys were gone to
bed, little else was talked about, and everybody
had some solution of the mystery to
offer, in which nobody else could see any
probability.

"We shall be like some of Miss Edgeworth's
goody poor people," said Cilla; "we
shall send back the bank-notes, and be