"What is this about, dear ? My poor
friend !"

I could hardly answer her. I could have
fallen before her and worshipped her, for the
tone of her voice. I answered with grief:

"You were so unkind, and you danced with
him!"

Captain Bulstock laughed aloud.

"A duel, I declare; and for you, Ada!"
She smiled.

"There's a galop now. Sidney, I'll make
Mr. Wicks change it to a quadrille, and we
will dance it together."

"Anything to prevent bloodshed," said the
captain.

Oh triumph! oh joy! oh delicious moment!
as I led her away. Even now, a yellow dress
and dark hair brings back that moment. She
was mine, she would be mine; she was true,
noble, generous!

"I am not quite pleased with you," she said,
as we took our place at the top. " You do not
trust me."

"Oh, I do, I do! But you do not care for
me. You like that fellow better."

"Who? Captain Bulstock?"

"No. Goodman."

"I don't like him at all; he is a conceited,
precocious little puppy."

She was mine again, she would be mine for
ever! The rest was rapture; Wicks became
glorified into a seraphic orchestra, the room
iuto a considerable ball-room. I could have
begun again and again, and quadrilled it all
night long.

Then came supper: a noble banquet, in a
room which, for obvious reasons, had been
kept under lock and key. It was past one A.M.
Roast fowls glistened everywhere in their own
refreshing native brown, and tongues likewise
bent into their own agreeable curve, and rich in
their peculiar varnish. Tongue, in those days,
seemed to me the viand for which I would,
in preference, run personal risk of arrest and
capture. I will not particularise the other
delicacies; enough that there was " champagne
to the mast-head," as a stout and cheerful
doctor observed, his hand affectionately
grasping the neck of a flask.

For the moment these delicacies took away the
thought of HER. She was not there. I wondered
at it after a time; for the conjunction of our
common nature, with rich and rare delicacies
of this sort, seemed about as natural and
inevitable as that of the magnet and the bit of
iron. Then it flashed upon me, where was he,
Bulstock? Her father presently appeared, and
said, jocosely, " he supposed she had gone off
in a post-chaise with some one, and had
abandoned him in his old age." After supper,
dancing began again, and then she reappeared,
and nodded over to me, brightly and happily.
Then orders were passed that we were to go
away.

"Going away," she cried, with her hand on
my shoulder; " taking off my little beau?"

'" Oh indeed !" said our people, " fine doings
altogether!" (I believed that they referred to
me, and blushed.) She looked confused, and
tossed her charming head.

"Whisper, dear," she said to them.

"No ?' was the answer in delighted surprise.

"Well, I am so glad. I'll come and see you
in the morning, and tell you about it."

I felt that this did not quite refer to me.

"What will a certain poor fellow do?" was
asked in a whisper. " Shall we tell him?"

Again I saw the bright face bent on me
with a look of wistful interest; there was even
a little pain in the face. She bent down to
me:

"Mind you are at home to-morrow when I
come, for I have a little keepsake to bring
you."

Then the golden face seemed to fade out in
the distance, and the tyrant Bulstock came up
to claim his prey.

There was a weight, a mystery at my heart.
It made me dismal. They told me in the carriage
as we went home — broke it to me gently, Bulstock
had proposed to her that night and had
been accepted. He was a good match, with a
staff appointment, interest, &c. Oh, how I suffered!
I was in agony all that night, but I was
too proud to let them know it. They thought I
was " sulky," and it was said, " You see, he
really has no feeling for anything." Oh, that
night, that golden vision! It haunted me long
afterwards like a dismal yet a lovely dream.
Such is the story of my first small love.

After that, home life ended suddenly, and I
was sent away to school.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.

A BASIN OF SOUP.

In those dark, those pitch dark ages, before
side dishes were invented, and when the majority
of the half-savage chasers of the mammoth lived
on fullers'-earth and cold lizard, what would not
a tyrant of Central Asia have given for a French
cook—a Ude, a Francatelli, or a Carême? If
such a man had then lived, would not Nasopile-
heaver have instantly sent waggon loads of silk,
rich cloths of gold and silver, chests of cinnamon,
carts full of pearls and sapphires, to
lure the great beneficent genius to his kingdom?
Would he not have declared war on the rival
king; and with spearmen, horsemen, battering-
rams, and other implements of war, have
instantly marched on his city, given it to sword
and fire, and carried off that illustrious stranger?
And having got that great master under lock
and key, would he not have threatened him
with the most terrible death unless he instantly
invented a dish lighter, more nutritious, and
more savoury, than any he had ever before
devised? Immured in the hot and strong dungeon
of King Nasopileheaver, could there be any
doubt what new plat that mighty brain in the
white nightcap would have conceived. What
is the lightest, most nourishing, most wholesome,