that at all events it would be superfluous in
me to confess to that infirmity. I wish you
would tell me a little more about yourselves. I
hardly know how to ask it of you, for I am
conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull
discouraging way with me, but I wish you
would."

"With all our hearts, sir," returned Lamps,
gaily, for both. " And first of all, that you
may know my name——-"

"Stay! " interposed the visitor, with a slight
flush. " What signifies your name! Lamps is
name enough for me. I like it. It is bright and
expressive. What do I want more!"

"Why to be sure, sir," returned Lamps. " I
have in general no other name down at the
Junction; but I thought, on account of your
being here as a first-class single, in a private
character, that you might——-"

The visitor waved the thought away with his
hand, and Lamps acknowledged the mark of
confidence by taking another rounder.

"You are hard-worked, I take for granted?"
said Barbox Brothers, when the subject of the
rounder came out of it much dirtier than he
went into it.

Lamps was beginning, " Not particular so"——-
when his daughter took him up.

"O yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen,
fifteen, eighteen, hours a day. Sometimes
twenty-four hours at a time."

"And you," said Barbox Brothers, " what
with your school, Phoebe, and what with your
lace-making———"

"But my school is a pleasure to me," she
interrupted, opening her brown eyes wider, as if
surprised to find him so obtuse. " I began it
when I was but a child, because it brought me
and other children into company, don't you
see? That was not work. I carry it on still,
because it keeps children about me. That is
not work. I do it as love, not as work. Then
my lace-pillow;" her busy hands had stopped,
as if her argument required all her cheerful
earnestness, but now went on again at the
name; " it goes with my thoughts when I think,
and it goes with my tunes when I hum any, and
that's not work. Why, you yourself thought it
was music, you know, sir. And so it is, to me."

"Everything is! " cried Lamps, radiantly.
"Everything is music to her, sir."

"My father is, at any rate," said Phoebe,
exultingly pointing her thin forefinger at him.
"There is more music in my father than there
is in a brass band."

"I say! My dear! It's very fillyillially done,
you know; but you are flattering your father,"
he protested, sparkling.

"No I am not, sir, I assure you. No I am
not. If you could hear my father sing, you
would know I am not. But you never will
hear him sing, because he never sings to any
one but me. However tired he is, he always
sings to me when he comes home. When I
lay here long ago, quite a poor little broken doll,
he used to sing to me. More than that, he
used to make songs, bringing in whatever little
jokes we had between us. More than that, he
often does so to this day. O! I'll tell of you,
father, as the gentleman has asked about you.
He is a poet, sir."

"I shouldn't wish the gentleman, my dear,"
observed Lamps, for the moment turning grave,
"to carry away that opinion of your father,
because it might look as if I was given to
asking the stars in a molloncolly manner what
they was up to. Which I wouldn't at once
waste the time, and take the liberty, my dear."

"My father," resumed Phoebe, amending her
text, " is always on the bright side, and the good
side. You told me just now, I had a happy
disposition. How can I help it?"

"Well; but my dear," returned Lamps
argumentatively, " how can I help it,? Put it to
yourself, sir. Look at her. Always as you see
her now. Always working—and after all, sir,
for but a very few shillings a week—always
contented, always lively, always interested
in others, of all sorts. I said, this moment,
she was always as you see her now. So
she is, with a difference that comes to much
the same. For, when it's my Sunday off and
the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the
prayers and thanks read in the touchingest way,
and I have the hymns sung to me so soft, sir,
that you couldn't hear 'em out of this room—in
notes that seem to me, I am sure, to come from
Heaven and go back to it."

It might have been merely through the association
of these words with their sacredly quiet
time, or it might have been through the larger
association of the words with the Redeemer's
presence beside the bedridden; but here her
dexterous fingers came to a stop on the lace-
pillow, and clasped themselves around his neck
as he bent down. There was great natural
sensibility in both father and daughter, the
visitor could easily see; but each made it, for the
other's sake, retiring, not demonstrative; and
perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or acquired, was
either the first or second nature of both. In a
very few moments, Lamps was taking another
rounder with his comical features beaming,
while Phoebe's laughing eyes (just a glistening
speck or so upon their lashes) were again
directed by turns to him, and to her work, and
to Barbox Brothers.

"When my father, sir," she said brightly,
"tells you about my being interested in other
people even though they know nothing about
me—which, by-the-by, I told you myself—you
ought to know how that comes about. That's
my father's doing."

"No, it isn't!" he protested.

"Don't you believe him, sir; yes, it is. He
tells me of everything he sees down at his work.
You would be surprised what a quantity he gels
together for me, every day. He looks into the
carriages, and tells me how the ladies arc drest
—so that I know all the fashions! He looks
into the carriages, and tells me what pairs of
lovers he sees, and what new-married couples on
their wedding trip—so that I know all about
that! He collects chance newspapers and books