new harpies leap into it, making it rock
and sway, and making the Frenchman
turn pale and the ladies shriek with fright.
Boxes are seized, not to be carried up to
cabs, but to be laid down on the lowest
step until another extortionate bargain is
struck. Half a crown—two shillings a piece
—not a hand to be put to them without
payment in advance; rather shall they be
dashed down violently into the mud, and
left there with imprecations.

On the other hand, the boatmen, now
eager to be back, are forcing their passengers
out; and between the two contending
bands of harpies the scene becomes quite
indescribable. At last, pillaged, stripped
of many shillings a piece, and worse,
insulted, abused, terrified, and nearly scared
to death, the luckless French party totters
to a cab, the women almost in hysterics.
There is (perhaps) a policeman, to whom
an indignant Briton appeals; but that
official, while admitting the shocking abuses,
owns frankly that he can do nothing. It
was a system, as the gentleman might
know, that had gone on for years. If there
were an actual assault, indeed, committed,
something might be done.

The writer can personally testify to the
daily occurrence of such scenes. But at
the present date of writing, when foreigners
are arriving by hundreds, matters are even
worse than usual: the scenes of pillage and
ruffianism defy description. Here is
legitimate opportunity for intervention, with
which not even the dreaded Bismark could
quarrel. Even an armed intervention would
be desirable, if nothing else could avail.
While for the sake of humanity, and for the
credit of our national good manners, such
as they are, we should not allow helpless
foreign ladies to be treated in so barbarous
a fashion.

                  DAISY'S TRIALS.
    IN SEVEN CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

"MY own child; yes, nurse, that's true;
but no truer than that it's his child. His
son! And I tell you, nurse, there are
times when it wouldn't be safe for me to
be alone with it; if a look of him should
come into its eyes I might kill it, for hate,
and for fear!"

She was only answered by a sigh.

They were sitting in the farm-house
kitchen—the kitchen of Moor-Edge, or, as
it is more commonly called, Murridge
Farm-house. A grey, substantially-built,
many-gabled house, with heavy stone-mouldings
above, mullioned and diamond-paned
lattices, and an ample stone porch. One
end of the house is covered by a century-old
pear-tree. In front it has a patch of smooth
fine turf traversed by flagged paths, walled
in by a low and broad-topped wall. In the
afternoon the shadows of the wind-blown
orchard trees stretch half across this green:
in a corner to which those shadows never
reach, stand a group of ash-trees. When
the sun shines, the aspect of the place is
cheery, its greys are warm, and its greens
full of a suppressed glow; but in winter,
and in dead, dull weather, it looks austere
and gloomy. A vast common stretches
northward behind the farm. From the
little-used front gate a steep and rough
footway, that in winter time is often
nothing but an impetuous watercourse,
precipitates itself towards the far-below lying
plain.

They were sitting close to the lattice,
and the July moon was just lifting itself
slowly to shine on them through the
ash-trees. The casement stood wide open, and
let in an evening air that was full of
perfumes: from the sun-burnt woodbine that
was hanging round the porch, from a group
of sun-burnt lilies beneath the window,
which would now bleach again in the
moonlight, and from late-lying sun-burnt
hay on a sloping meadow out of sight.

The woman who had spoken had a face
which, in that mysterious mingling of
twilight and of moonlight, looked softly
girlish. She was dressed in lustreless
black. The other, whom she had called
"nurse," who had answered her only with
a sigh, was middle-aged, and comely, and
sad-eyed. She, too, wore black; she sat
in an old-fashioned cushioned chair, and
rocked in her arms a scarcely three-months'
old child.

There was a long silence, broken only by
occasional noises from the farm-yard, by
the rustling of leaves, and the tranquil
breathing of the sleeping child.

The moon had climbed a good way above
the ash-trees, tinting the clear sky a
rose-tinged lilac, before either of them spoke.
Then it was the older woman, with tender
deference, and, at the same time, with
the sort of caution one unconsciously uses
towards the mentally sick: feeling the way,
to find how much can be ventured, how
much can be borne.

"All this day you've been thinking, and
it's not much else, indeed, that I've done;
thinking about the letter. May I tell you