especially to another person's disadvantage. So
I don't think she ever told Captain James of
Mr. Brooke's speech about a sailor's being
likely to mismanage the property; and the
captain was too anxious to succeed in this,
the second year of his trial, to be above going
to the flourishing, shrewd Mr. Brooke, and
asking for his advice as to the best method
of working the estate. I dare say, if Miss
Galindo had been as intimate as formerly at
the Hall, we should all of us have heard of
this new acquaintance of the agent's long
before we did. As it was, I am sure my lady
never dreamed that the captain, who held
opinions that were even more Church and
King than her own, could ever have made
friends with a Baptist baker from Birmingham,
even to serve her ladyship's own
interests in the most loyal manner.

We heard of it first from Mr. Gray, who
came now often to see my lady, for neither he
nor she could forget the solemn tie which the
fact of his being the person to acquaint her
with my lord's death had created between
them. For true and holy words spoken at
that time, though having no reference to
aught below the solemn subjects of life and
death, had made her withdraw her opposition
to Mr. Gray's wish about establishing a
village school. She had sighed a little, it is
true, and was even now more apprehensive
than hopeful as to the result; but, almost as
if as a memorial to my lord, she had allowed
a kind of rough school-house to be built on
the green, just by the church; and had gently
used the power she undoubtedly had, in
expressing her strong wish that the boys might
only learn to read and write, and the first
four rules of arithmetic; while the girls were
only to learn to read, and to add up in their
heads, and the rest of the time to work at
mending their own clothes, knitting stockings
and spinning. My lady presented the school
with more spinning wheels than there were
girls, and requested that there might be a
rule that they should have spun so many
hanks of flax, and knitted so many pairs of
stockings, before they ever were taught to
read at all. After all, it was but making
the best of a bad job with my poor lady—
but life was not what it had been to her. I
remember well the day that Mr. Gray pulled
some delicately fine yarn (and I was a
good judge of those things) out of his pocket,
and laid it and a capital pair of knitted
stockings before my lady, as the first-fruits,
so to say, of his school. I recollect seeing
her put on her spectacles, and carefully
examine both productions. Then she passed
them to me.

"This is well, Mr. Gray. I am much
pleased. You are fortunate in your school-
mistress. She has had both proper knowledge
of womanly things and much patience.
Who is she? One out of our village?"

"My lady," said Mr. Gray, stammering
and colouring in his old fashion, "Miss Bessy
is so very kind as to teach all those sorts of
things—Miss Bessy, and Miss Galindo, sometimes."

My lady looked at him over her spectacles:
but she only repeated the words Miss Bessy,
and paused, as if trying to remember who
such a person could be; and he, if he had
then intended to say more, was quelled by
her manner, and dropped the subject. He
went on to say, that he had thought it his
duty to decline the subscription to his school
offered by Mr. Brooke, because he was a
Dissenter; that he (Mr. Gray) feared that
Captain James, through whom Mr. Brooke's
offer of money had been made, was offended
at his refusing to accept it from a man who
held heterodox opinions; nay, whom Mr.
Gray suspected of being infected by
Dodwell's heresy.

"I think there must be some mistake,"
said my lady, "or I have misunderstood you.
Captain James would never be sufficiently
with a schismatic to be employed by that
man Brooke in distributing his charities. I
should have doubted, until now, if Captain
James knew him."

"Indeed, my lady, he not only knows him,
but is intimate with him, I regret to say. I
have repeatedly seen the captain and Mr.
Brooke walking together; going through the
fields together; and people do say——"

My lady looked up in interrogation at Mr.
Gray's pause.

"I disapprove of gossip, and it may be
untrue; but people do say that Captain
James is very attentive to Miss Brooke."

"Impossible!" said my lady, indignantly.
"Captain James is a loyal and religious man.
I beg your pardon, Mr. Gray, but it is
impossible."

CALLING BAD NAMES.

THERE once lived in the richest of all
kingdoms over which a mortal ever ruled—in
Shakespeare's fancy—a certain knight, named
Don Adriano de Armado, who wore fine
clothes with never a shirt under them, used
big words with little sense in them, and,
being himself a big, loud man, relied for all his
wit upon a tiny serving boy, named Moth. It
was a wonder to some of the Don's friends
that Moth had not found his way into the
knight's mouth. "I marvel," said Costard
to him, "thy master hath not eaten thee for
a word; for thou art not so long by the head
as honorificabilitudinitatibus."

HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS.

That word stands for a cudgel with which
many a poor student's brains have cruelly
been beaten. It is the gimlet of the social
bore. It is the bludgeon of the scientific bully.
Who shall venture to touch or to smell
English plants with such names as Splanchnomyces,
Tetragonotheca, Xysmalobium,
Zuccagnia, Schivereckia, Pogogyne, Helminthostachys,