remonstrances, and trotted on before them with
wonderful briskness.

"That is our landlady," Aunt Mary explained
to Mabel, "Mrs. Bridget Bonny, the best
old soul in the world. I've lodged in her house
three seasons. That is the place, over the
shoemaker's shop, and that nice cheerful bow-
window belongs to our sitting-room. It isn't
grand, Mabel, but it's very comfortable, and
exquisitely clean."

Mrs. Bonny entered the house by a narrow
door at the side of the shop, which she
proudly spoke of as the "private
enthrance," though, as it was exceedingly strait
and inconvenient, visitors after one or two trials
usually abandoned that mode of ingress, and
walked humbly and comfortably through the
shop. Mabel and Mrs. Walton followed her
up-stairs into the front sitting-room with the
bow-window. It was a very cheerful room,
looking into the main street of the town; its
furniture was covered with a gay-patterned
chintz; and the carpet, if not very rich in
quality, was adorned with a lavish variety of
colours. Everything was bright, neat, and admirably
clean. At one end of the table, covered with
a snowy cloth, tea-things were set forth.

"I thought, maybe, ye'd loike a cup of
tay as well as anything, afther yer journey,"
said Biddy. " An' I've got a roast fowl for
yez, and a rasher of bacon. It'll be all ready
in half a jiffy, ma'am. Sit down on the sophy
and rest. Sure it's half dead they must be,
the craythurs!"

Although by no means in so exhausted a
state as old Biddy appeared to suppose, the
travellers were yet sufficiently fatigued and
hungry to enjoy sitting comfortably in a less
cramped posture than had been possible in the
coach, and to be prepared to do justice to the
excellent meal which was presently set before
them.

"What a dear old creature Mrs. Bonny
is!" said Mabel, when they were all seated at
table.

"Mrs who?" cried Jack, looking up from
the plateful of broiled bacon that he was
discussing with infinite relish.

"Mrs. Bonny, the landlady! '

"Oh, Biddy! I never heard any human
being call her by her husband's name before.
And I got a confused idea in my mind that
old Bonny must suddenly have committed
bigamy!"

"Jack," said his mother, "you' re a gander.
But Mabel's quite right. Biddy is a pearl of
price. I don't know a better, harder-
working woman than Biddy Bonny."

Then Aunt Mary went on to explain
something of Biddy's history and family.

Old Joe Bonny was her second husband.
Her first husband had been a widower with one
son when she married him. This son, Teddy
Molloy, was a shoemaker by trade, and rented
the shop in which he worked, of his step-mother;
himself and his young wife inhabiting a separate
dwelling-house. Joe Bonny was an Englishman,
and though an old man nearer to eighty
than to seventy years of age, had only given up
his work during the last five years.

"And a nice time Biddy has of it, with him,"
observed Jack. "He is the crustiest old file!
He was a navigator. Not Captain Cook, you
know, but a ' pickaxe and a spade—spade,'
and that kind of thing. I believe that he hasn't
two consecutive inches of unbroken bone in his
body. He has fractured both his arms, both his
legs, all his ribs, and cracked his skull and collar-
bone in several places. And as to his hands!
Well, as well as I can remember, he has at the
present moment only two fingers and half a
thumb in working order."

"Oh, Jack!"

"Upon my word I am stating very nearly the
literal fact. He has been broken and mended
again, in every possible and impossible place;
but he don't seem much the worse for it as
regards his general constitution. Only, he finds
time hang heavy on his hands; so he sits and
smokes in the chimney-corner and consoles
himself by growling at Biddy, and abusing the
Irish."

"What a dreadful old man!" cried Mabel,
laughing in spite of herself.

"Well, he has his good points too, has old
Joe. He is thoroughly honest, and has a kind
of bull-dog fidelity about him. But I must be off
to the theatre, and see what's going on there.
They open on Monday, and I dare say there
will be lots of things to touch up in the
scenery. Any commands, mother?"

"Give my kind remembrances to Mr. Moffatt
if you see him, and ask what the Call is for
Saturday, and see that some arrangement is
made for Mabel to dress in the same room with
me, and come back time enough to post a letter
that I'm going to write to father before the
evening mail is made up. That's all, Jack."

"I'll not fail, mother. And Mabel, if you
want assistance in uncording or unpacking, or
any matter in which a fair amount of brute
force is desirable unadulterated by any
intellectual element, I shall be happy to put myself
at your service."

"Thank you, Jack; but I am in no need of a
Caliban, and I think that's about what you have
made yourself out to be."

So Jack, making the house ring with a peal
of boyish laughter, ran down-stairs and betook
himself to the theatre.

Mrs. Walton's first care was to write a few
lines to her husband, which would be read to
him by Janet; and then she and Mabel
proceeded to busy themselves in unpacking and
laying out their stage dresses, chatting all the
time. For, as Mabel was to occupy a small room
opening out of her aunt's bedchamber, by leaving
the door of communication open, they were
able to talk together uninterruptedly.

The wardrobes of Mrs. Walton and her
niece were neither extensive nor splendid; but
allowing for the necessary amount of paste and
tinsel—for these stage queens wear a good deal
of mock jewellery: unlike the real reigning