THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER

[Transcriber’s Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.
VARIETIES.
BOOKS BEFORE TRAVEL.
A QUIVER OF QUOTATIONS.
“OUR HERO.”
ON SOME POINTS OF DEPORTMENT IN SINGING.
HANGING CASE FOR UMBRELLAS AND STICKS.
“AFTERNOON TEA;” A CHAT OVER THE TEACUPS.
THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.
USEFUL HINTS.
STRAY LEAVES FROM ASSAM.
ON A VERY OLD PIANO.
SOME HOLIDAY MUSIC.
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

SHEILA’S
COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN, Author of “Greyfriars,” “Half-a-dozen
Sisters,” etc.

“THE MAN GRINNED AND SHOOK HIS HEAD.”

All rights reserved.]

CHAPTER X.

AFTER-EFFECTS AND CYRIL.

The whole place was in a
tumult. The streets were
thronged. Passionate inquiries
and greetings were
passing from mouth to mouth.
The chief thing was to get
the girls under cover as
quickly as possible, out of the
hubbub all round the municipal
buildings. The Bensons
threw open their house; the
Cossarts did the same. Sheila
soon found herself, together
with May Lawrence and Miss
Adene, in her aunt’s drawing-room,
where Raby and
Ray had preceded them, and
they were received with the
warmest effusion by the company
gathered there, for in the
confusion and alarm nobody
was confidently reckoned to be
safe till he or she had been
actually seen.

North came in a few minutes
later.

“Effie has been taken
straight home in our uncle’s
carriage. We could not get
at you, Sheila, so Oscar is to
take you back later on, when
the excitement is abated. Are
the girls there? That’s all
right. Yes, mater, I am safe
enough; but don’t keep me.
There are frantic mothers
hunting up their children still.
I believe no lives have been
lost; but I must go and do
what I can to reassure them.
We must find the waifs and
strays, and get them to their
right owners!”

{578}

He kissed his mother and swung
himself off; and then a little more quiet
fell upon the room, whilst those who had
been eye-witnesses of the catastrophe
were eagerly called upon to relate their
experiences.

Mrs. Cossart had not been at the hall
that afternoon, being fatigued by her
exertions the two previous days; and
her husband, having let all the boys off,
had had to keep to the office himself,
and only came hurrying home in alarm
and consternation when the news
reached him that the Town Hall was on
fire!

Sheila, listening breathlessly whilst
some ladies who had been in the lower
hall related their experiences, thought
that they had escaped the worst of the
terror by being in the upper room.
Several of the children’s frocks had
caught fire, and it seemed at one time
as though the whole place and the
hapless people would be in a blaze; but
there were plenty of exits, and the police
at the doors kept their heads, and
passed the children out with great
rapidity; and the firemen were on the
scene almost at once. The flames got firm
hold upon the temporary structures of
stalls and so forth, but the building
itself never took fire, being of solid
stone.

There had been fearful screams, and
wild panic; but on the whole the people
had behaved exceedingly well, and
though there was some inevitable
crushing, there had been no actual
block, and it was believed that no lives
had been lost.

“The only man I saw who behaved
really badly,” said one lady, who had
evidently been instrumental in saving
several children, and whose dress was
much burnt in consequence, “was one
of the actors from upstairs, who came
flying down, and pushed and fought his
way out without heeding anything or
anybody. He overturned several little
children, and one of them would have
been trampled to death had not a policeman
snatched it up. I was really glad
to see another man—a fireman, I believe—give
the young man a sound cuff on
the side of his head that sent him reeling
out into the open. I won’t say that
nobody else hustled or pushed—at a
time like that one cannot observe everything—but
I saw no one else disgrace
his manhood in that way.”

“Shameful,” said Mr. Tom sternly.
“One of the actors, you say. One
ought to be able to find out who it
was.”

“He had on a white satin suit—that
made him the more conspicuous. I
suppose he had completely lost his
head. One must not be too hard on
people who do that; but one rather
hates to see it.”

At that moment the door opened and
Cyril came airily in. His cheek was
very red, as though from some sort of
injury, and his mother sprang forward
exclaiming—

“Oh, my boy, did you get burned?”

Cyril put up his hand and laughed.

“Did I? I did not notice. One has
not time to think of that sort of thing at
such a time. Besides, I was out of it
sooner than many. I was afraid the
people in the council room, which was
the theatre, would be cut off from help.
I made a dash for it to get the fire-escape
brought round to them at the
windows. One could not tell at the
outset how fast the fire would spread.
I was horribly afraid they would all be
suffocated up there, whilst the energies
of the rescuers were directed to the
larger hall. I’m afraid I was rather
unceremonious in my flight, but, at any
rate, I accomplished my purpose, and
that’s the great thing.”

Sheila and May exchanged quick
glances. Was that really Cyril’s motive
in making that wild bolt? Certainly it
had not been the impression produced
upon those who had heard and seen him
at the time. His father looked at him
steadily, and said—

“I hope you were not the man in
white satin, who overturned little children
and pushed aside women and girls in
his determination to get out. Whatever
your motive, nothing could excuse
conduct like that.”

Cyril’s face flushed, but he answered
airily—

“In such confusion I think nobody
can quite say what it is that happens.
I am quite willing to bear any odium
my townspeople like to put upon me, so
long as I know that I was in time to
accomplish my errand, and send the
escape to the windows where my sisters
and cousins were waiting.”

Nobody spoke for a few minutes, and
then Raby remarked slowly—

“It was Lionel Benson who went for
the escape and brought it.”

“Yes; Lionel came up in time to
escort it. I was hardly in the costume
for that part of the business. Well, he
is quite welcome to the honour and
glory. So long as you are all safe, I
care for nothing else.”

A carriage presently drew up at the
door, and one of May’s brothers came
in, saying that the streets were getting
quiet, and she could drive back safely
now. Miss Adene and May were now
the only guests left in the Cossarts’
drawing-room, and they bade a very
warm adieu to their entertainers, drawn
together by that common bond of
sympathy which an experience such as
had just been passed through quickly
establishes.

“You must come and see us very
soon,” said May to Sheila, “and tell us
how Effie is. I’m afraid she will feel
the shock.”

Sheila kissed her and Miss Adene
affectionately, promised to ride over as
soon as she could, and soon afterwards
started off on foot with Oscar for Cossart
Place, he having leave from his uncle to
remain there over the Sunday if he were
invited.

“For I don’t think any of you will be
much good to-morrow,” said he, with a
hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “It has
been a bit of a shock to us all. Take a
day off, and come back like a giant
refreshed on Monday. Let us have
word of poor little Effie. I hope it
won’t throw her into a fever.”

Brother and sister went off contentedly
together, and they could not but take a
look into the open space round the
Town Hall before starting out into the
country.

The crowd was still large about it,
but it was known now that no serious
harm had been done to the building,
and that there had been no loss of life,
though a few persons had been injured,
and many were suffering from the effects
of fright and burns.

As they passed by the fire-station
they saw the grimy face of the man who
had come with the escape, and he,
recognising them, put up his hand in
salute, and said—

“The young lady none the worse,
sir?”

“Not a bit,” answered Sheila, answering
for herself; “you came and took
us away before there was any real
danger. Who was it told you about
us up at the windows?”

“Mr. Benson, miss—Mr. Lionel, I
should say. We might not have known
about it but for him. We thought as
everybody had come down and were
getting out by the doors.”

“Was it not Mr. Cyril Cossart who
first gave the alarm?”

The man grinned and shook his head.

“Bless you, miss, that young gentleman
lost his head quite. They say he
fought his way out like a madman, and
lots of people saw him flying home in
his white finery like a cat with a cinder
on its back! No, no, missie, it was Mr.
Lionel as brought us news of the folks
at the windows. We musn’t be too
hard on the people as loses their heads
at such a time; but we likes better to
see them behaving themselves rational
like. It was fine the way the ladies
in the hall behaved! They thought
nothing of themselves, but all was for
getting the little ’uns safely out. If
they’d gone and lost their heads and
made a rush, it would have been a terrible
nasty business, and some of ’em had
bound to be killed; but what with them
behind and the police at the doors, it all
went off beautiful, one might say.”

They talked a little more to the man
and then went their way.

Sheila’s face wore an indignant flush.
She said in a low voice to Oscar—

“I think I could have forgiven him
the panic; he mightn’t be able to help
that. But to tell that mean lie afterwards!
Oh, I can never respect him
again.”

Oscar was silent a few minutes, and
then said slowly—

“I think, Sheila, that we had better
try to forget it, and not to say anything
to anybody else about it. It hurts
people’s feelings if their next-of-kin are
proved unworthy, and Cyril has been
thought so much of at home. Perhaps
in the confusion nobody will think much
more about it. You know it is often the
nearest relatives who do not hear the
exact truth about a bit of a failure like
that. We won’t be the people to talk
of it. Our uncle and aunt have been
very kind to us. We must remember
that, and I think it would be a terrible
trouble to Aunt Tom if she were to
think——”

Oscar did not complete his sentence,
and Sheila said quickly—

{579}

“Isn’t it better for them to know the
truth?”

“But perhaps it isn’t really the truth,”
said Oscar, “I am not sure that a man
should be judged for what he does in a
time of panic——”

“No, but the lie afterwards——”

“Yes, that was bad; but think of the
temptation to make some excuse for
himself! Do you know I can fancy
being tempted to it. He had always
been thought so much of at home and
in the town. To be branded as a coward!
It would be almost unendurable.”

Sheila was silent; she felt that Cyril
deserved the brand, and her youthful
clearness of judgment made compromise
difficult.

“Well, I won’t say anything if you
don’t think I ought, but I can never
like Cyril again. I shall always despise
him.”

“We must not despise one another
more than we can help,” said Oscar
soberly. “You know, Sheila, we have
so many faults ourselves. We ought to
try and think of that.”

Sheila was accustomed to defer to
Oscar’s judgment, and she was kindly
by nature, though frank and candid.
She did not see much good in hushing
things up, but she promised not to speak
herself of what the fireman had said.
She rather hoped it would come out to
some of the rest; she did not think that
North would be easily deceived. He
had been very indignant about Cyril’s
conduct.

But upon reaching home the current
of her thoughts was soon turned in
another direction.

Effie was ill!

There was no gainsaying it this time.
Fanciful she might be, and others for
her, but the shock and the fright of the
fire had been too much for her. She
had lapsed into unconsciousness during
the drive home with her father, and now,
though put to bed and with the doctor
in attendance, she had shown no signs
of animation.

Sheila was not permitted to go up to
the room, and glad was she that Oscar
was with her. Suppose Effie should die!
The thought sent the blood ebbing from
Sheila’s cheeks.

“Oh, I wish I had cared more for her,
I wish I had not been so selfish so often.
Oscar, I begin to be afraid I am selfish.
I do think first what I like myself, and
then I try to invent reasons for doing
it. I have so often left Effie alone and
gone out riding, or doing things that
amused me. Oh, I wish I hadn’t
now!”

“I’m afraid we’re all rather like that,”
answered Oscar. “I know I am. Perhaps
things like this—that fire, and
now Effie—are sent to pull us up and
make us think. It came over me when
for a moment one wondered whether
there would be any getting out, how
little one had done with one’s life. Perhaps
it will help us to think more, Sheila.
I’m sure I need it.”

“If you do, I do much more,” said
Sheila; and they sat clinging together
in the dusk, till at last the sound of
steps and voices on the staircase roused
them, and Sheila started up crying—

“Oh, there is the doctor. Let us go
and ask him.”

He was coming down with Mrs.
Cossart; she was looking greatly upset,
but his face wore a look of grave cheerfulness,
and they heard him say—

“Yes, she will want care—great care—for
some time to come, but there is
nothing to agitate yourself about—no
probability of a return of that condition.
Let her be kept perfectly quiet, and she
will sleep right away now. What I have
given her will ensure that. I will look
in first thing to-morrow morning.”

Sheila stood trembling in the hall
below, and hearing words which proved
to her that Effie was better, she suddenly
burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably.

“Tut, tut,” said the doctor kindly,
“what is the matter here?”

“She was upset to hear about her
cousin’s illness,” said Oscar, answering
for her. “She was in the Town Hall
too, and I think we all got a fright, and
coming home to hear of illness had upset
her quite.”

“Send her to bed, send her to bed,”
said the doctor kindly, “and keep her
there till I come to-morrow. I can’t stay
now. I am wanted in all directions at
once. It has been a bad bit of business,
but thank God things are wonderfully
better than we might have looked to see.”

And the doctor went off in haste, being
wanted, as he said, in half a dozen
different directions, whilst Mrs. Cossart
took Sheila in her arms, in an almost
motherly embrace, for her tears over
Effie’s illness had touched a chord of
sympathy.

“Is dear Effie better?” sobbed Sheila.

“Yes, just a little; she’s come to
herself, but he would not let her talk,
and gave her an injection of morphia
which sent her off to sleep. Perhaps
she will wake up much better. And
now, my dear, you must come to bed
and tell me all about it, for I have not
been able to hear anything, and I am
all in a tremble still to think of you all—and
my precious child—in the midst of
such terrible danger.”

“And I don’t feel as though I could
do anything,” cried Sheila, “till I have
thanked God for saving us and for
making Effie better.”

(To be continued.)

VARIETIES.

The Dishonest Servant.

A well-known firm in Edinburgh consisted
of two partners, and to provide against dangers
from fire and burglary it was made a stipulation
in the deed of partnership that one or
other of the heads of the firm should always
sleep on the premises.

In the course of years this became rather an
irksome restriction on their liberty, and in
order to free themselves from it they agreed
to take into partnership their manager, an old
servant of the house, on condition that he
should occupy the bedroom and so fulfil the
requirements of the deed.

The old servant was naturally very much
moved by this recognition of his services, but
pleaded that he had not the necessary capital
to qualify him for partnership. As to that it
was only £500 that was required, and that the
firm had decided to give him.

And so the matter was settled. The trusty
servant became a partner and took possession
of the room, and in it he was found dead next
morning, having committed suicide.

He left behind him a letter in which he
explained that all those years during which he
had been so trusted by his employers, he had
been robbing them, and their great kindness
had so filled him with remorse that he could
not live under it.

The Power of Music.

The late Dean Stanley was very fond of
Jenny Lind, but when she stayed at his
father’s palace at Norwich, he always left the
room when she sang.

One evening Jenny Lind had been singing
Handel’s “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
Stanley, as usual, had left the room, but he
came back after the music was over, and went
shyly up to the great singer.

“You know,” he said, “I dislike music.
I don’t know what people mean in admiring
it. I am very stupid, tone-deaf, as others are
colour-blind. But,” he added, with some
warmth, “to-night, when from a distance I
heard you singing that song, I had an inkling
of what people mean by music. Something
came over me which I had never felt before;
or, yes, I have felt it once before in my life.”

Jenny Lind was all attention.

“Some years ago,” he continued, “I was
at Vienna, and one evening there was a tattoo
before the palace performed by four hundred
drummers. I felt shaken, and to-night while
listening to your singing, the same feeling
came over me. I felt deeply moved.”

“Dear man,” Jenny Lind used to say, when
she told this story, “I know he meant well,
and a more honest compliment I never received
in all my life.”

Bad Temper.

{580}

BOOKS BEFORE TRAVEL.

By DORA DE BLAQUIÈRE.

PART I.

nd even as I write this
heading I feel my
heart failing me
somewhat. First the
largeness of the subject
before me is a
cause of misgiving
and next the thought
of the many differing
minds and impressions
of the people
who travel nowadays, and who, most of them,
are of the generation of globe-trotters. These
care more about covering the surface of the
earth with their tracks, and are not in the
least degree anxious about the culture that
may be acquired in travel, and the nearly
dormant condition of the intellect carried
about with them in their peregrinations.
Others who travel are eager to see, but have
had in their past life neither the time nor the
means to educate themselves for enjoyment;
or they are too young to have had the opportunity
to do so. We all meet with examples
of these classes on our own travels, and there
are few of us who have not, at some time, had
cause to exclaim, “Good gracious! what on
earth did these people come abroad for?” so
little interest do they find or show in the
beauties of nature or art which surround
them. They are far more interested in their
meals, the bills at the hotels, and the extortions
of the shops, than in the finest pictures
by Guido, or the loveliest and grandest view
from a mountain-side.

But even while I write, this I know, that
the earnest study of years and the reading of
many books would hardly suffice to the knowing
of it all; and we often have to be content
with the careful reading of Baedeker or
Murray, and the use of our eyes; and reserve
the reading-up of the subject until we have
reached home once more. Even then, we
often do not know what to get in the way of
reading, unless we have some direction to aid
us. It is to help those who have time before
starting, and those who desire to read up, as
I have said, afterwards, that these articles are
written, and if there be some shortcomings,
some books left out, or others inserted that
should not have been put in, it must be remembered
that my views of what I personally
want to prepare myself for a journey may not be
your views; and that everyone is not interested
in a special object. Therefore the list must be
comprehensive, so as to take in all comers.

It always seems to me a good plan to start
with the history of the country to which your
steps are turned, because the chief interest of
every land must naturally be derived from its
past, from the people who made it what it is,
and who lived in its buildings, on its lands,
and worshipped in its temples. If the country
in which we travel be our own England, we
generally have learnt enough of its history to
make the names of the actors in it household
words; and the local histories have been carefully
collected for us by the many archæological
societies in all parts of England. So that
we may, if we like, know all particulars of the
styles of living, and the people, and manners of
the past centuries. In England especially, men
who lived in it made the interest of the land
they lived in, and the same is true of Scotland.
But in Ireland it was different, and there the
land is the chief point of interest, and the
interest is with legend more than with real
people and things. If the Green Isle had only
been fortunate enough to have a wizard-like
Walter Scott to touch the scenery, and make
it alive with people, what a change it would
have worked for her to-day!

For a history of England we cannot do
better than select Green’s History of the
English People, which is not only history, but
history written in a delightsome manner, and
quite long enough to be interesting and concise
enough not to fatigue the reader of any
age. But if time be not an object to you,
take Miss Strickland’s histories and read
them through, every one of them, even including
those of the Bachelor Kings. It may be
the fashion to think her gossipy, but her
gossip is worth anything in making you feel
that the people of whom you read really lived,
breathed, and walked the earth. Scott,
Wordsworth, and Tennyson, Shakespeare,
and Ossian; and in Ireland both Lever and
Lover should bear you company, while the
reminiscences of Dean Ramsay and Wilson
will make you feel Edinburgh doubly delightful.
In the far north, William Black has
touched Thule and the Hebrides with the pen
of romance; and Kingsley and Blackmore
have done the same in the south, with Westward
Ho! and Lorna Doone. And in London
we walk with Thackeray and Dickens, on
every side, from Piccadilly and Clubland to
Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Fleet Street.

Beside the romancer we must also read
Freeman’s English Towns and Districts and
Fergusson’s Architecture, George Barrow’s
Wild Wales, King’s Handbook of the Cathedrals,
and Cassell’s Old and New London.
Alfred Rimmer’s book on the Ancient Streets
and Homesteads of England is most helpful,
and I will end by remarking that you had
better begin Ruskin, with, I think, the
Elements of Drawing and the Lectures on
Art.

In France we are very well off for books
in all languages; but in the way of history,
Guizot’s is rather a long business, and any
shorter history which is available is less tiring,
if you be not a rapid reader. Viollet le Duc
will be a great delight to you, I am sure, and
Hare’s Walks in Paris and Ways near Paris,
and Eastlake’s Notes on the Louvre, with a
good guide, should be enough for the capital.
In the way of romance, you have Victor
Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. Miss
M. B. Edwards’ France of To-day, A Year
in Western France, and Holidays in Eastern
France are charming books, and so are
Hamerton’s Round my House, Modern
Frenchmen, and A Summer Voyage on the
Saône. Miss Pardoe’s books on the Court of
France are also well worth reading for the
historical side of life.

Switzerland I have always thought most
resembles England, in the interest of its
history, and in the character of its people.
In many ways it is the model country of
Europe, for the Swiss are ever open to change
and improvement, and to trying experiments
in all the social walks of life into which many
other greater nations would shrink from embarking.
A book recently published on
Social Switzerland gives a view of their
charitable and other institutions, and shows
this very clearly, and it is worth reading if
you be interested in that side of the country.
General Meredith Reade’s two great volumes
of Vaud and Berne, deal entirely with the
historical, descriptive, and family side of the
country, and are very interesting. Foreigners
have done much to make Switzerland delightful,
and especially the English, for have we
not that delightful Playground of Europe
by Leslie Stephens, and J. A. Symonds’
Swiss Highlands, Tyndall’s Glaciers and
Whymper’s Alps, to say nothing of a long
series of most excellent guide-books, and
histories, and the finest of poetry, beginning
with Coleridge’s Hymn to Mont Blanc, and
Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon.

There seems to be hardly a foot of this most
delightful country that is without its interest,
and its literature; and if we read French and
German it is well worth the trouble to read
Vinet, the philosopher and religious writer,
and Amiel’s Diary, the saddest and most
beautiful of records.

If you are interested in the flowers of the
mountains, you have a delightful book by W.
Robinson, Alpine Flowers; and The Alps in
Winter are written of by Mrs. Main (Mrs.
Fred Burnaby), and the many books on Davos
Platz, and the Engadine, may all be found in
any catalogue, if health be in question. If
you were interested in geology, glaciers, and
botany, you can study them with ease in
Switzerland, as well as Lancastrian dwellings,
and the last methods in tree-culture. As for
schools, they abound, and the Swiss education
is the best in the world, in its thoroughness
and complete grounding in all subjects.
Lately, too, it has been found worth while
to study the Swiss army, and its manœuvres
which take place every year in the month of
September.

One of the European countries round which
both history and literature have been making
and growing is Holland; and for so small a
country the amount of both is quite marvellous.
It is all so interesting too, and most of
it in our own tongue, so that we need not be
professors in Dutch. The most delightful
of all histories have been written for us by
American hands, and no library is complete
without Motley’s two great Dutch works,
The Rise of the Dutch Republic and the
History of the United Netherlands. The
great Italian writer, Edmondo de Amicis, has
written two books on Holland—Holland, and
Holland and its People; and we have the
charming volume on the Dead Cities of the
Zuyder Zee, H. Taine’s Low Countries, and
Holland and Germany, by J. P. Mahaffy and
J. E. Rogers. In the “Story of the Nations”
Series there is an excellent volume by J. E. T.
Rogers, and there are several delightful tales
published lately, with the Low Countries for a
background. And we have made acquaintance
with Maarten Maartens, the author of
stories that are Dutch in their characters and
surroundings.

You must bear in mind that the Netherlands
means Holland and Belgium. For so small a
portion of the earth, the history of Holland is
most interesting; and we must remember
that she was once the mistress of the seas.
There is a popular history of the Great Dutch
Admirals, by Jacob de Liefde, and he has
also written Beggars, Founders of the Dutch
Republic. Prescott’s work of Philip II. of
Spain covers much the same ground as
Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, though
from the point of view of Spain. In this
connection, W. C. Robinson’s The Revolt of
the Netherlands may be read. Holland
claims to be the birthplace of printing, and
advances the claims of Haarlem, in
opposition to Mentz, and the record of the
Elzevir presses at Leyden, Amsterdam, and
the Hague is a very famous one. Lord
Ronald Gower has written a Pocket Guide to
the Art Galleries of Belgium and Holland,
containing both the public and private
galleries; and Kate Thompson has contributed
a Handbook to the Picture Galleries{581}
of Europe, while there are several very
excellent guide-books in the ordinary way.

Now that Norway is so much visited, it
would not be well to leave it out of the list of
places to be seen, and read up before visiting.
I think the most charming book I have ever
read about it is Mrs. Stone’s Norway in
June, which is quite as delightful as her
Tenerife, and its Six Satellites. Round
about Norway, by Charles W. Wood, is
another pleasant volume; and Professor
Boyesen’s History of Norway is one of the
best-written of histories.

There are several best books on Sweden.
The Land of the Midnight Sun, by Du
Chaillu, and Under Northern Skies, by
Charles W. Wood, are concerned with both
countries; and in the way of romance, we
have Frederica Bremer’s works, which are full
of national colour. Paul du Chaillu has also
written a delightful book called, The Viking
Age, in two volumes, illustrated. The Story
of Norway has been written also by Mrs.
Arthur Sedgwick. In the way of Historical
Biographies, there are many. Charles XII.,
Gustavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, and the
Thirty Years War; with that wonderful
woman, Queen Christina, and Queen Caroline
Matilda, who was the sister of George III.

The early history of Denmark is of course
comprised in the history of Scandinavia
generally; and the same may be said of
Iceland and Greenland. An excellent Handbook
of Runic Remains and Monuments,
both in England and Scandinavia, has been
written by Professor George Stephens, and
these you should know something about in
reference to both countries. The Danish
novel Afraja, and Björnstjerne Björnson’s
Stories and Norse Tales are well worth reading.
Mrs. Alec. Tweedie has written A Girl’s
Ride in Iceland, and a pleasant book about
Finland. And there is the Ultima Thule of
Sir Richard Burton, and The Story of
Iceland, by Letitia MacColl. The Land of
the North Wind, by E. Rae, and Under the
Rays of the Aurora Borealis is a book
written by a Dane, and translated. One of
the most delightful books I ever read of, one
of which a new edition was issued in 1887, is
that entitled Letters from High Latitudes, by
the Earl (now Marquis) of Dufferin; and
there is a charming book by Baring Gould, on
Iceland, its Sagas and Scenes. Iceland is a
country which is more and more visited every
year; but there are no more recent books
than those I have mentioned.

We are so near to Russia that it seems
foolish to pass it by, though I feel it is a
difficult country to deal with. The history of
Russia is dealt with in the “Story of the
Nations” Series. Mr. A. J. C. Hare has given
us Studies in Russia, and the R.T.S. a
charming Russian Pictures drawn by Pen
and Pencil. Mr. W. S. Ralston’s Songs of
the Russian Peasantry contains an excellent
account of the social life of Russia. In the
way of poetry, the Rev. T. C. Wilson has
translated for us Russian Lyrics into English
Verse, which gives specimens of all the best
recent poets, and there are translations of the
works by most of the Russian novelists, as
well as of Tolstoi’s books. But I do not feel
inclined to advise you to enter on this troubled
sea of thought. As a mere traveller you will
not need to do so. Turner’s Studies in
Russian Literature, and his Lectures on
Modern Novelists of Russia, are quite enough
for you, I fancy. The latter were delivered at
the Taylor Institute, Oxford, and are pleasant
and instructive, both. An Art Tour to the Northern
Capitals of Europe, by Atkinson, includes
those of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kiel.

In Germany the poets are our best travelling
companions. I remember Nuremberg best
through the medium of Longfellow, and its
history through the historical tales of Mühlbach,
Auerbach, and Marlitt. The Baroness Tautpheous,
the Howitts, and even Hans Christian
Andersen, and Grimm, have all, too,
lent a magic to the land. The literature that
has arisen with Wagner and Bayreuth, for a
centre, is very wide, and begins with the
Arthurian Legends and the Nibelungen-Lied.
Of the first you will have some knowledge
from our own Tennyson and the Idylls of the
King, even if you do not go as far as the
Mabinogion, which was edited and translated
by Lady Charlotte Guest, of which there is
an abridged edition. We have a translation
of the Nibelungen-Lied by W. N. Lettsom,
and another by A. G. Foster-Barham, in the
“Great Musicians” Series. Wagner is written
by Dr. F. Hueffer, who has also written
Wagner and the Music of the Future. There
is a volume to be obtained at Bayreuth of all
the operas given there, which you will most
likely procure, if you should be led there any
August to assist at the Wagner festival.

For Austria we have several delightful
fellow-travellers. Amelia B. Edwards, in Untrodden
Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, deals
with the Dolomite region; a more recent book
is Robertson’s Through the Dolomites; and
there are two books by W. A. Grohman on
Tyrol and the Tyrolese, and Gaddings with a
Primitive People. Victor Tissot’s Unknown
Hungary has been translated from the French,
and the little-known Dalmatia has been dealt
with by Mr. T. G. Jackson. C. W. Wood
has written In the Black Forest. There are
several modern books on Bismarck and his
master, the Emperor William I., and also on
Imperial Germany, and you should choose the
most recent of these. There is an illustrated
book, by K. Stieler, called the Rhine from
its Source to the Sea, which has been translated
and is very interesting. As a general
thing, the guide-books are so many and so
various, dealing with health, baths and spas,
and the various artists, musicians, battle-fields,
and seats of learning, that unless you
were looking up any special subject, they will
give all the information you require for
travelling in the Fatherland.

In the way of extended literature, you may
read, if you like, Helen Zimmern’s Half-hours
with Foreign Novelists, and in the way
of distant travels there is, to me, the ever-fascinating
Ida Pfeiffer, that wonderful German
woman, whose wanderings were worldwide,
and the contents of whose purse was
microscopic at all times. Mrs. Bird, Miss
Gordon Cumming, Lady Brassey, Miss
Kingsley, and that delightful Miss Gates,
who is quite the equal of Madame Pfeiffer
in her fearless and adventurous spirit, are all
worth reading. James Gilmore, as a writer
and traveller, is so delightful that one feels
the deepest regret at his early death. Mr.
and Mrs. Pennell are always excellent companions,
whether they travel to the Hebrides
or take a Sentimental Journey through France;
or one nearer home, On the Stream of Pleasure;
The Thames from Oxford to London, or Play
in Provence. They are the pioneers in cycling,
for the tourist, and have steadily ridden from
the days of the tricycle, till it has been eclipsed
by a more rapid machine.

{582}

“OUR HERO.”

By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Rapid travelling, ninety years ago,
was a comparative term, but Ivor performed
the journey as fast as relays of
horses could convey a post-chaise to the
coast, and as quickly as contrary winds
would allow him to cross the Channel.

He sent no warning of his approach.
A letter could not go with greater speed
than Denham went himself. Now that
he was actually on the road to Polly,
each hour’s delay became all but insupportable.
Six long years since he
had said good-bye for one fortnight to
Polly! Would she be altered—as much
as he himself was altered?

It was a cold day, late in spring, when
he found himself at the front door of the
Bryces’ comfortable mansion. The old
butler opened to Denham, as once before
to Roy, but this time Drake was not taken
in. One glance—and his face changed.

“Sir!”

“You know me? I hardly thought
you would.” Ivor grasped kindly the
old retainer’s hand. “I am taking you
all by surprise.”

“It is a surprise indeed, sir. And
I’m heartily glad to see you again. Not
but what you ain’t looking as you should,
sir. Them furrin parts haven’t suited
you, I’m thinkin’.”

“Captivity has not suited me. And
I have travelled hard, and taken little
rest. But the old country will put me
right. Who is in?”

“My mistress, sir, is in the drawing-room,
and Miss Keene and Miss Baron.
I was about to take in lights.”

“Wait till I have gone in. And
Drake, you can announce me, but don’t
say my name so that it can be heard.”

Drake obeyed to the letter. He threw
open the drawing-room door, and
mumbled something inaudible. Denham
entered, bowing ceremoniously.

“You can bring lights, Drake,” said
Mrs. Bryce. The room was dark, and
the fire had fallen low.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m excessive glad to see you, sir,”
Mrs. Bryce declared cordially, after a
hurried whisper to Polly, “Who did he
say, my dear? Oh, well, ’tis easy to
see—he’s one of the military. A soldier
home from the wars.” Then she turned
to Ivor with her welcome. “Mr. Bryce
is away, I’m sorry to say, but doubtless
you can await his return, and Mr. Baron
will be in this minute.”

Ivor had some difficulty in recognising
his friend Roy under this designation.
Polly was casting half-shy glances at
him. Something in the outline of his
figure, dim though the light was,
brought Denham to her mind, but it
was not until he spoke that her colour
changed fast from pink to white and
from white to pink.

“I shouldn’t be surprised to be
informed, sir, that you are but just home
from the war,” said Mrs. Bryce.

“I have not been fighting, I regret to
say. My turn for that will no doubt
come. I have been long a prisoner.”

“And you have obtained your
release?”

“The Emperor has consented to my
return.”

Mrs. Bryce held up both hands.

“That is excessive gracious of him,
truly. You are more fortunate than
many. Roy Baron was not so well off,
and he had to make his escape. But
he has been since in the Campaign in
Portugal and Spain under our great
Commander, Sir John Moore. A truly
melancholy story that, sir,—yet he died
as a soldier would choose to die, covered
with glory. And Roy—Mr. Baron, I
should say—is now back with us for a
little space; and we, his friends, fondly
think he has done well. But will you
allow me to offer you cake and wine?
You have a very tired look. What can
Drake be about not to bring the lights?”
Mrs. Bryce’s hand was on the bell.

Denham was gazing earnestly towards
Polly, so earnestly that she could not but
return the gaze. A thrill ran through
her, for there was no mistaking that
voice. Molly took upon herself to put
a pointed question:

“Have you come from Verdun, sir,
if I might ask?”

“Pray take a seat, sir,” Mrs. Bryce
was reiterating. She might as well
have spoken to stone walls.

“I am straight from Verdun,” Ivor replied
to Molly’s query. “As I am fain to
think Miss Keene has already divined.”

Polly dropped a curtsey and said
nothing. It was not for her to make
any first move. Nobody could hear
how her heart fluttered.

“Then, sir, doubtless you will bring
messages for us all from the unfortunate
prisoners there detained,” said Mrs.
Bryce, not yet grasping his identity
with one of those prisoners.

Drake at this moment carried in the
lights, and Roy, entering with him, cried
out in astonishment.

“Den! Why, ’tis Den himself!
Can it be in very truth? Den, dear
fellow!”—nearly wringing Ivor’s hands
off with the energy of his welcome.

Pre-occupied though Ivor was with
Polly, his gaze rested with satisfaction
upon “his friend Roy.” The boy who
had left Verdun for the dungeons of
Bitche was a man now, broad-shouldered,
well-built and soldier-like,
frank as ever in manner, yet with
a certain something in the young face,
which told not only of endurance, but
of the touch of sorrow. At the present
moment, however, Roy’s look was all
sunshine.

“I am glad, Den, more glad than
words can say. Little I dreamt who I
should find in here! And you’re free!
But how is it? How has that come
about? You don’t say old Boney has
let you off! Of his own free will? I
wouldn’t have given the old chap credit
for so much generosity. What made
him do such a thing? Lucille? No!
Bravo, Lucille!”

Nobody else had a chance of being
heard. Mrs. Bryce exclaimed and
talked in vain. Polly and Molly waited.
Roy’s eager questions had to be answered,
before Denham was allowed to
turn elsewhere.

Then came a change of manner and
a lowering of voice.

“I shall have no end of things to tell
you, things he said of you too, Den.
Ay, I know”—at a slight gesture.
“Another time. Yes, by-and-by. But
you’ve seen accounts of the battle.
That charge of the Reserve through
the valley wasn’t bad! French column
tried to turn our flank, you know. We
did just knock ’em into a cocked hat and
no mistake. The column just simply
ceased to exist.”

Molly tried to put in a word, and was
baffled.

“You’ll be as furious as I am at
some of the comments in the papers.
The utter ignoramuses! What about?
Why, the state of our Army getting
back from Spain. I should think the
poor fellows were scarecrows, after all
they’d gone through. Small wonder
either! The scarecrows made the
enemy give an uncommon good account
of ’emselves at Coruña, all the same.
But people here seem to think an Army
can walk through a Campaign, and come
back every inch as spick and span as
when it left British shores. Much they
know about the matter! And if shoes did
wear out, and our fellows got back barefoot,
whose fault was that but the fault
of those who made the shoes at home?”

So much Roy poured out impulsively.
Then he stopped. A consciousness
had broken upon him of something
unsatisfactory, something impending.
Denham’s face was to him as an open
book, and he saw written there more
things than one. One thing that he saw
made him turn sharply to Polly, as she
stood a little way off, prettily composed.
Was this the meeting of the two, after
six years of enforced separation?

Roy recalled his talk with Polly on his
return from Bitche, and in a flash he
read the true state of affairs. He looked
hard at each in turn.

“Polly, didn’t I tell you? He has
come back.”

Polly stirred slightly.

“You understand? ’Tis Den himself.”

It was necessary for Polly to answer.

“Captain Ivor is indeed most fortunate
to have obtained his release,” she
said, adjusting her scarf.

“Fortunate to have obtained his
release!” repeated Roy slowly.

Then he acted, with a decision and
promptitude worthy of his vocation in
life. A gesture ordered Molly to make
herself scarce. Seizing Mrs. Bryce by
the arm, he dragged away that astonished
lady, reserving explanations till
they were outside the room. After
which he poured forth profuse apologies,
but would allow no re-entrance, literally
setting his back against the door.

(To be concluded.)

{583}

ON SOME POINTS OF DEPORTMENT IN SINGING.

I hope you who read these words will not
think that I am encouraging the vanity of
which we all, girls and boys too, possess a
certain amount, in giving a few suggestions
which may help to dispel some of the
awkwardness so often shown by the young
and inexperienced vocalist.

How often, usually at the moment of going
on the platform at some small amateur
concert, have I heard the cry, “Oh, I must
have a piece of music to hold in my hand!”
from some nervous young singer, oppressed
by the feeling that she is all hands and has
nowhere to hide them!

How often has a pretty song, tastefully
sung, been spoiled by a wriggling of the
shoulders, or a rocking of the body from side
to side most irritating to behold!

How often has a song “breathing of scent
and flowers,” of love and spring-time, been
warbled with a forbidding scowl and wrinkled
forehead—the expression of the whole face
suggesting some hidden agony rather than
interpreting the spirit of the composition!

All these things are most distracting to a
listener and detract considerably from the
effect of the performance; and a little trouble
and study, combined with the assistance of
your good and true friend the looking-glass,
will do much to improve matters.

Let us take the three points I have mentioned
in their order.

First the hands. Clasp them loosely in
front of you and then forget all about them!
Make a point of practising it whenever you
are fortunate enough to obtain an accompanist
to play for you, or when you are having your
singing lessons. Commit your song to memory
so as to dispense with the music, stand away
from the pianoforte, avoid propping yourself
against the wall or leaning upon the furniture,
stand easily, and let your hands clasp naturally
and comfortably.

Now for the wriggling. Any of you who
have had your photograph taken must remember
the unpleasant little arrangement
which the photographer sticks behind your
head to keep it still; and some of you may
have protested against the discomfort and
unnaturalness of it and have appealed to be
allowed to pose without it, only to get the
answer that it is indispensable, as the head
moves constantly, though not enough to be
noticed, yet sufficiently to spoil any exposure
longer than an instantaneous one. And yet
the person being photographed is apparently
motionless! Now watch someone who is
telling some exciting news or some funny
story, and you will see that the head moves
with every word spoken—the more emphasis,
the more movement!

I remind you of these things in order to
show you how very necessary movement is to
us and how, naturally, the head moves in
speech rather than the body.

If you carefully watch a confirmed wriggler,
you will notice that, though the body sways
or the shoulders move, the head is very rigid
and is usually held very high, and altogether
the position looks constrained and awkward,
and it has a disastrous effect upon the voice,
for all these little awkwardnesses and uglinesses
mean that there is a corresponding
unnaturalness of production, and the memorable
maxim in the Koran, that “there are
many roads to Heaven, but only one gate,”
applies forcibly to singing, in the respect that
the only true singer is he who produces his
voice with the most ease and simplicity
(though that may have only been acquired by
the hardest study) quite irrespective of the
particular method by which he has been
taught.

There is one great drawback which we
must take into consideration from which all
singers suffer more or less, and which is at the
root of most of these faults of “deportment”
and of this one in particular, and it is this.

A certain amount of nervousness is inseparable
from singing, whether we sing to
just one or two chosen friends or before a
large concert audience, and even when we
won’t confess to “feeling nervous,” we cannot
escape from another form of it and a very
trying one—self-consciousness. And the
usual result of self-consciousness is to seize
upon the muscles of the throat, to cramp and
contract them till the head is held as if in
a vice, so that the voice comes hard and
strained; and as the natural movement of the
head is prevented by this rigidity, Nature
(who never stands still) asserts herself by
giving the necessary movement to the body
instead; hence the wriggling of the shoulders
and the rocking from side to side.

In this case prevention is better than cure,
and the best thing to do is to practise
diligently moving the head from side to side
whilst singing, especially when practising
exercises. Do not raise it high, and avoid
the inclination to raise it as the voice rises to
the higher notes; but move it freely and
constantly from side to side. At first you
will find this very awkward, and it will seem
terribly unnatural and ridiculous; but persevere,
and you will find that not only your appearance
will be improved, but your voice will come
easily and your throat will not get that aching,
tired feeling of which so many complain after
singing for quite a few minutes, and which is
due to the contraction of the throat and the
constrained position of the head.

For the third point, facial expression, I
commend you to your looking-glass. Indeed,
the greater part of your study should be done
with its assistance. First to be assured that
your mouth is open, then to watch that no
grimaces appear, no pucker between the
brows, no opening the mouth crookedly,
no blinking of the eyelids. Try to let your
expression vary as freely as it does when you
are talking.

Remember you have only your face to
assist you. A reciter can call gesture to her
aid; but a singer does not want to do
anything that might bring down upon her
the accusation of being “theatrical.” She
wants to stand quietly and naturally, her
hands folded, her head rather low, and tell
her story, her face changing with the changes
of her song.

But bear in mind that all these things
which come naturally to us when we are not
thinking about them or about ourselves become
unnatural when we are struggling in the
grasp of the demon self-consciousness, and it
is for that reason that I conclude these hints
with the paradoxical reminder that as the
unstudied and natural usually looks constrained
and unnatural, our aim must be to learn
artificially and to practise incessantly to look
natural.

Florence Campbell Perugini.

{584}

“AFTERNOON TEA;” A CHAT OVER THE TEACUPS.

By AMY S. WOODS.

Within the last twenty years the simple but
most popular meal known by the name of
“afternoon tea” has become a prominent
feature in domestic and social life.

“Afternoon tea!” The very words suggest
to our minds pleasant visions of cosy fireside
tea and talk on winter afternoons, or lazy
enjoyment of the “cup that cheers” under
the welcome shade of some spreading tree in
drowsy summer-time.

True, the institution of this meal has been
much condemned of late. We are told that
women drink far more tea than is good for
them and are growing more nervous in consequence;
while the sterner sex complain that
the enjoyment of their dinner is spoiled by
their previous indulgence in the dainties of
the tea-table.

Nevertheless, I think even those who cavil
most at the evil influence of tea and its
accompanying delicacies would, in their hearts,
be sorry to witness the abolition of a meal
which has won the support of so large a
section of English society, from royalty
downwards.

AFTERNOON TEA.

To those who are weary of formal entertainments,
it comes as a boon and a blessing,
while to those whose love of social pleasures
is larger than their purse it is even more welcome,
as it enables them to entertain their
friends more frequently, with but little of the
cost and trouble which more elaborate social
gatherings involve. And it is to this latter
class of afternoon-tea devotees that I dedicate
the following recipes and suggestions.

It is easy for dwellers in London or other
large towns to obtain a nice variety of cakes
and biscuits wherewith to grace their tea-tables;
but those who live in country villages are less
fortunate, and are sometimes sadly conscious
of lack of variety in the cakes they can make
or procure. I hope therefore that the recipes
here given will be acceptable to all those who
are willing to spend a little care and trouble
in carrying them out. Most of them are
capable of further variation, and clever heads
and fingers will devise artistic and dainty
decorations and ornamentations for themselves,
the result of which will be that their cakes will
be quite as beautiful to look upon, and probably
more beautiful to eat than those supplied
by a fashionable confectioner.

One thing must be remembered by all
aspiring cake-makers, viz., that dainty cakes
and biscuits require time, care, and patience
in their production, and cakes that are hurriedly
made are seldom satisfactory. Another
point to be remembered is that afternoon tea
is not a substantial meal, so that we must
endeavour to have all our dishes as dainty and
elegant as possible both in their composition
and manner of serving.

We cannot perhaps all boast of silver or
Sheraton tea-trays, or of Dresden or Worcester
china; but a plain linen or small-patterned
damask cloth embroidered with a large initial,
and either prettily hemstitched or edged with
Torchon lace, will hide all the deficiencies
of our tea-tray, and now that such pretty
Coalport china can be bought at such a
reasonable price, no one need be without a
charming tea-set.

In arranging the china and linen for afternoon
tea, it will be well to remember that
coloured china looks best upon a white cloth
or upon a cream-coloured one embroidered in
silks or flax threads to match the colours in
the china, while for use with plain white or
white-and-gold china a cloth of art linen, in
plain blue, yellow or pink, with white embroidery
is most suitable.

Nor need any hostess lament over her
scarcity of small silver table appointments in
the way of teapot and cream jugs and sugar
basins, for a china teapot and hot-water jug
and the sweet wee cream jugs and tiny basins
now sold to match almost every stock pattern{585}
of china, look quite as dainty and artistic as
their more imposing silver brethren.

See that your bread-and-butter is delicately
thin, and that it and your cakes and sandwiches
are served upon dainty doyleys of
fringed damask, and if you provide two small
plates, one with brown and one with white
bread-and-butter, they will be found more
convenient to hand about than one large
plate.

When there is only a small party, the use
of a luncheon tray, with three divisions, will
save trouble in handing cakes, etc., and, be it
whispered, these same trays are also convenient
when your stock of cake is low, as small
pieces of cake which could not possibly attain
to the dignity of the cake-basket, will make
quite an imposing appearance if cut in slices
and arranged in one division of the tray, with
some biscuits in the second and some carefully-rolled
bread-and-butter in the third.

No doubt all my readers are acquainted
with the silver or electro-plated handles which
are now sold for attaching to cake and bread-and-butter
plates, and a very convenient invention
too; but should your means preclude
your indulgence in these luxuries, do not, I
pray you, be inveigled into buying the substitutes
made of a sort of millinery arrangement
of wire, ribbon, and artificial flowers. They
soon become shabby and tawdry, while even
when they can boast of pristine freshness the
idea of ribbon and artificial flowers in such
close proximity to eatables is to my mind at
once incongruous and inartistic.

In cutting bread-and-butter or sandwiches,
a loaf at least twenty-four hours old should
be used, as it is impossible to obtain a satisfactory
result with new bread. Servants, it
may be noted, are as a rule far too liberal with
the butter, which they often leave in lumps in
any holes there may be in the surface of the
bread; and should the bread be cut as thin as
it ought to be, the butter will probably work
its way through to the other side with very
unpleasantly greasy results.

And now for the recipes themselves, and as
savoury sandwiches—and, indeed, sandwiches
of every kind—are always favourites we will
have a friendly chat concerning them before
passing on to cakes and biscuits.

For the foundation of all sandwiches, we
must use evenly cut, and not too liberally
buttered, bread, and be very careful that our
seasoning is generously used, but with discretion.
To crunch a lump of salt in a sandwich
is by no means a pleasant experience.

Cress Sandwiches, though always appreciated,
are simplicity itself. Carefully wash
and thoroughly dry the cress, arrange on slices
of bread-and-butter, sprinkle with salt, and,
after pressing the covering slices firmly down,
cut into two-inch squares and pile on a doyley,
garnishing with tiny bunches of cress.

Watercress Sandwiches are made in the
same way, using only the leaves, which must
be most carefully washed in salt and water.
Most people consider the addition of a little
mayonnaise sauce a great improvement, and
the following will be found a simple but excellent
way to make it:

Rub the yolk of a hard-boiled egg very
smooth, adding a good pinch of salt, a grain
or two of cayenne pepper, and a quarter of a
teaspoonful of made mustard; then add alternately,
and drop by drop, lest the sauce should
curdle, one tablespoonful of vinegar and two
of salad oil, and one tablespoonful of very
thick cream. Use a wooden spoon for the
mixing, and do not make the sauce too liquid
or it will ooze through the sandwiches.

Chicken Sandwiches, made with a little
finely pounded chicken with a layer of watercress
or lettuce and a little mayonnaise, are
excellent.

Cucumber Sandwiches are always welcome
in hot weather. Soak the slices of cucumber
in some well-seasoned vinegar for two or three
hours before using, turning it frequently. Cut
the bread round each slice of cucumber with a
small round pastry-cutter and garnish with
parsley. A little dab of mayonnaise in each
sandwich is a great improvement.

Shrimp Sandwiches are delicious. From a
pint of shrimps, pick out a few of the largest
with which to garnish your sandwiches,
shell the remainder and allow them to get
thoroughly hot over the fire (but not to boil)
in a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, or
two ounces of butter and two tablespoonfuls
of thick cream, and a discreet seasoning of salt
and pepper. Pound the mixture in a mortar
until perfectly smooth, and then spread upon
either white or brown bread-and-butter, and
cut the sandwiches into rounds. A dariole
or tiny pudding-mould with a crimped edge
answers capitally for the purpose. Pile upon
a doyley and garnish with the shrimps upon
some fresh parsley.

Crab or lobster paste prepared in the same
way but with the addition of a little mustard
and vinegar, and no cream, makes excellent
sandwiches.

Anchovy Sandwiches are made in the same
way, using a good brand of anchovy paste
instead of the shrimp mixture. If you have
plenty of eggs at command, the hard-boiled
yolks of two, pounded to a paste with two
ounces of butter and a tablespoonful of
anchovy paste, will make a superior sandwich.

Egg Sandwiches are filled with the same
paste of pounded eggs, well seasoned, but
without the anchovy; another ounce of butter
or two tablespoonfuls of cream is an improvement
in this case.

So much for sandwiches; the eight varieties
I have mentioned will serve as a foundation
from which clever housekeepers will devise
numerous other kinds. Almost any scraps of
shell-fish, game, or poultry, can be pounded
and used as I have described, and if the seasoning
is all that it should be, and the sandwiches
are delicately made and served, they will
always find some appreciative mortals to enjoy
them!

And now to turn our attention to the cakes
and biscuits, which I hope my fair readers will
make with their own dainty hands, and thus
ensure success, even if it be evolved from
early failures.

Before passing on to the actual recipes, will
they accept six general hints as to successful
cake-making?

Firstly (as I have said before)—Give yourself
time, and do not hurry or slur over any part
of the process.

Secondly—Be sure your oven is at the
right temperature before you put in your cakes.
A quick oven is best for buns and small cakes,
and a tolerably quick one to raise large cakes,
and then the heat must be lowered and kept
at a regular temperature to bake them through.
When a cake has risen, lay a sheet of buttered
paper over the top to prevent it blackening.
To ascertain if a cake is sufficiently baked,
plunge a clean knife or skewer through the
centre; if it comes out clean and dry the
cake is baked, if sticky, it requires further
baking.

Thirdly—Be very careful that your cake-tins
or moulds are thoroughly clean and well
greased. Line your plain tins with well-greased
plain paper, not printed. The tins
for small cakes such as queen cakes should be
sprinkled with flour and castor sugar after
they are buttered.

Fourthly—Use only the best flour, and see
that it is well dried, sifted, and warmed before
using. Clean currants and sultanas with
flour on a sieve; this not only cleans them
but prevents them from sinking in the cake.

Fifthly—Before commencing to mix your
cake, be sure your tins are ready, and that
you have round you all your ingredients
weighed and prepared, so that you may not
have to leave your cake unfinished while you
fetch something you have forgotten. All
cakes but those made with yeast should be
baked directly the mixing is finished.

Sixthly—Do not be disheartened if your
first attempt to make a new cake is a failure.
We too often forget that success is frequently
the outcome of many failures.

Before giving any recipes for fancy cakes, let
me advise you to give the following recipes
for “Sally Lunns” and “Tea Cakes made
with yeast,” a trial.

For the former, mix half a teaspoonful of
salt in a pound of flour, and add three tablespoonfuls
of sugar. Melt half an ounce of
butter in half a pint of new milk, and when
milk-warm pour it over half an ounce of
German yeast. Add a well-beaten egg and
a little grated nutmeg. Stir lightly into the
flour with a wooden spoon, cover with a cloth
and set it in a warm place to rise; then bake
from fifteen to twenty minutes in a quick oven.
Some well-greased hoops are best to use for
baking Sally Lunns, and the cakes should be
brushed over with some beaten egg before
they are quite baked. To serve, split each
one into three slices, toast a delicate brown,
butter and cut each slice in two, place together
and serve on a very hot plate.

For Tea Cakes take two pounds of flour,
half a teaspoonful of salt, quarter of a pound
of butter or lard, and three ounces of sugar,
with a few currants or sultanas if liked. Mix
half an ounce of German yeast with three-quarters
of a pint of warm milk and one egg.
Rub the butter into the flour, and add the
other dry ingredients, mix in the liquid part
and knead lightly, and then set to rise. When
sufficiently light divide into round cakes,
place on a baking-sheet and allow them to
remain a few minutes longer to rise again
before baking. They will require from a
quarter to half an hour in a good oven. They
may either be split open, buttered, and eaten
while hot, or toasted in the same way as
Sally Lunns. The great culinary authority,
M. Soyer, recommends that after toasting
cakes or hot buttered toast, each piece should
be cut through separately and then placed together,
as when the whole is divided at once
the pressure needed to force the knife down
to the plate, forces the butter into the lowest
slice, which is often swimming in grease
while the upper slices are comparatively dry.

And now we will turn our attention to a
few cakes which I can cordially recommend.
Let us take Cherry Cake to commence with.
For this you will require six ounces of flour,
three ounces of butter, three ounces of castor
sugar, two eggs, the grated rind of half a
lemon, two ounces of crystallised or glacé
cherries and a teaspoonful of baking-powder.
Slightly warm but do not oil the butter, beat
it to a cream with the sugar and lemon, add
the eggs, well beaten, then the flour and
cherries (cut in halves), and lastly the baking-powder.
Whisk thoroughly, pour into a
paper-lined tin and bake from three-quarters
to half an hour. Another plan is to bake the
cake in a Yorkshire pudding tin, and when
baked to cover the top with pink icing,
made with the white of an egg beaten up
till fairly liquid but not frothy, and mixed
very smoothly with sufficient icing sugar to
make a smooth paste. You will find the
readiest way of doing this is to use a wooden
spoon on a dinner-plate, holding the bowl
of the spoon with the fingers; a little
practice and patience are needed to make
the icing perfectly smooth, but remember
one lump spoils the appearance of the
icing. Add a few drops of cochineal and a
few drops of vanilla flavouring, and spread
the icing evenly over the top of the cake{586}
with a paper knife or dessert knife; a steel one
must not be used. Take off any drops that
may run over the sides of the cake and divide
it in two pieces while the icing is wet, then
dry at the mouth of the oven.

For Orange Cake take the weight of
three eggs in butter, sugar and flour, the
grated rind and strained juice of an orange, or
two, if small, and a teaspoonful of baking-powder.
Make and bake the cake in exactly
the same way as the preceding one, but if
iced, use white icing, or colour it with a little
grated orange-rind and juice, using orange-juice
to flavour it.

Madeira Cake is made in the same way
and with the same proportions, but the orange
is of course omitted and some finely-sliced
lemon or candied peel substituted as a flavouring,
or a little essence of vanilla.

For various kinds of cake you cannot have
a better foundation than by taking the weight
of as many eggs as you wish to use, in flour,
butter and sugar, and then adding the various
flavourings and a teaspoonful, more or less,
according to the number of eggs, of baking-powder.

Desiccated cocoanut makes a nice change if
Cocoanut Cake is desired, or, if you do not
mind the trouble of grating it, the fresh
cocoanut is of course superior. After the
cake is baked brush the top over with a little
white of egg and scatter some of the cocoanut
upon it.

Twelve delicious little Rice Cakes may be
made by taking one egg and its weight in
sugar and butter, half its weight in ground
rice and half in wheaten flour. When mixing
add the rice after the flour, and also a few
drops of flavouring or the grated rind of half
a lemon. Bake in small tins in a quick oven
for ten minutes. If two or more eggs are
used and the other ingredients increased
in proportion an excellent cake can be
made.

Almond Buns are also nice. For these
take half a pound of flour, six ounces of
butter, six ounces of castor sugar, four ounces
of almonds blanched and chopped, and a
teaspoonful of baking-powder. Mix together
the butter, sugar, eggs and flour, add the
almonds and baking-powder last, form into
buns and bake on a buttered tin for twenty
minutes.

Queen Cakes are always favourites but
require careful making and the proper heart-shaped
tins to bake them in. Prepare the
tins as previously directed by buttering them
very thoroughly and sprinkling with castor
sugar and flour. Then take three eggs, their
weight in fresh butter, sugar, flour, and currants,
and the grated rind of a lemon.
Cream the butter and sugar together, add the
eggs, fruit, and a pinch of salt, then the flour
and half a teaspoonful of baking-powder, and
lastly a small wineglassful of good brandy.
Whisk thoroughly, shake off any loose flour
or sugar from the tins, fill them three parts
full of the mixture and hit each one sharply on
the table before putting in the oven. Bake
for twenty minutes.

Genoese Pastry is also popular, but cannot
be made in a hurry. Take half a pound of
butter, half a pound of castor sugar, half a
pound of flour, the yolks of two eggs and the
yolks and whites of two more eggs, and half
a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Mix
thoroughly, spread evenly over sheets of
buttered paper placed in Yorkshire pudding
tins, smooth over with a knife dipped in
boiling water, and bake twenty minutes in a
moderate oven, but keep the cake a pale
brown colour.

While it is baking prepare some icing as
directed for cherry cake, using the two whites
of egg left over from the cake. Divide into
two portions on two plates, colouring one
pink and leaving the other white; flavour the
former with a little raspberry syrup, or juice
from some jam, and the latter with vanilla,
lemon, or a little maraschino liqueur. Dissolve
half an ounce of grated chocolate with
two tablespoonfuls of water and stir it over
the fire till thoroughly smooth and liquid, adding
two or three lumps of sugar. If you
have not a forcing bag with which to ornament
your icing, or if you are not an adept
in the use of it, provide yourself with a few
crystallised cherries, blanched almonds, chopped
pistachio nuts, and pink and white comfits
with which to decorate your cakes. How
they shall be decorated I leave to your own
artistic minds to decide—only reminding you
that almonds, pistachio nuts or a neat pattern
of pink and white icing, or a border of alternate
pink and white comfits are most suitable
for decorating chocolate icing, while cherries
and pink sugar look best on white, and almonds
and white sugar on pink. A very
speedy and effective decoration is to sprinkle
white grated cocoanut on your pink cakes,
and a mixture of pink (coloured with cochineal)
and pale green (coloured with spinach
juice) on white icing, using a mixture of all
three colours on the chocolate. The study of
the cakes in some high-class confectioner’s
will help you here. When the cake is baked
lift it by the paper on to a clean pastry-board,
remove the paper, divide each slab of cake
across, and then split it open. On one piece
put raspberry jam and press the other half
upon it while hot; on another marmalade, on
the third apricot, and on the last strawberry
or pineapple. Pour over the apricot cake
your chocolate icing, and while still hot cut
into strips about two and a half inches wide,
and then cut again slantwise across the strips
so as to form diamond-shaped pieces. Then
place them at the mouth of the oven to dry,
while you proceed in the same way with your
other cakes. Be careful to use your pink
icing with the red jam, and white with the
yellow. When partially dry the decorations
must be added, otherwise they will not adhere
to the icing, and then the cakes must be
again dried until the icing will not take
the impression of the finger when pressed
upon it.

Scotch Shortbread is a favourite with many
people, though hardly to be commended to
the notice of dyspeptic sufferers. The following
recipe for it, given to me by a Scotchwoman,
will be found a very good one.

One pound of flour, four ounces of ground
rice, one pound and a quarter of butter, three-quarters
of a pound of sugar, a little candied
peel, and a pinch of salt. Beat the butter to
a cream, add the sugar, and very gradually sift
in the flour and rice; work with the hands
till quite smooth and divide into six pieces.
Put each piece on a sheet of paper and roll
out to the thickness of half an inch, prick it
all over, lay on it the pieces of candied peel,
pinch the edges, and bake in a moderate oven
from twenty minutes to half an hour.

Fancy Biscuits can be made at home, and
will be found quite equal in taste and appearance
to the more expensive kinds sold in the
shops. Care must be taken that the oven is
not too hot as they will not look well if they
are browned; and the flour and sugar used
for them must be very finely sifted and
thoroughly dry. To make four varieties of
these biscuits at once, take one pound of
fresh butter and cream it with half a pound of
castor sugar, and add two well-beaten eggs.
When well whisked divide the mixture into
four basins. Divide also a pound of fine flour
into four parts. To the contents of the first
basin add a quarter of a pound of flour and
two tablespoonfuls of ground ginger. Mix
well. Turn on to a floured board, roll out to
the thickness of a quarter of an inch, cut out
with a small pastry-cutter or the top of a
wineglass, place a piece of candied peel or a
preserved cherry on each, and bake on a sheet
of buttered paper laid on a baking tin for
about twenty minutes. Proceed in the same
way with the second portion, but instead of
the ginger add the grated rind and juice of
an orange, and if needed, a tablespoonful
more flour. To the third division add half a
teaspoonful of vanilla flavouring, and ornament
the top of each biscuit with a little pink
and white icing after baking. If the biscuits
are made stiff they will keep their shape well
in the baking, and may be cut into various
fancy patterns such as ivy leaves, stars,
diamonds, etc. Ivy leaves with the veins put
on in white or pink icing are very pretty. To
the last basin add one ounce of finely-chopped
almonds, and make the biscuits oval in form
with two strips of blanched almonds on the
top. Walnuts may be used instead of almonds,
in which case I should make the biscuits in
the shape of a half walnut shell with half a
peeled walnut on the flat part. These would
require to be made very stiff. Chocolate icing
is very nice to put on vanilla biscuits.

And now space warns me that our chat
over the tea-table must come to an end. I
hope that the few simple recipes I have given
will be found both good and economical.
Too economical perhaps for some of my
friends, but I would remind all who wish for
richer cakes that in the many excellent
cookery-books, both French and English,
now published, they will find recipes which
cannot fail to win their most cordial appreciation.
Yet in all humility I venture to hope
these few hints of mine may win a meed of
fainter praise from those who, appreciating
dainty cookery, have yet to study economy in
their household management.

{587}

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.

By ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO, Author of “Other People’s Stairs,” “Her Object in Life,” etc.

CHAPTER XI.

A MOTHER AT HOME.

his holiday
season is
bad for
advertisements,”
Miss Latimer
decided.
“I
fear you
must give
another
trial to
registry
offices.
Other
methods
take time,
especially
private
recommendations
among
shopkeepers
or acquaintances—which is the
best. You have only a week in which to
make your arrangements. But do not
go again to great registry offices, which
let down their nets in wide waters, and
catch many queer fish. I know a little
quiet registry about midway between
this house and my lodgings. Not a big
professional place, my dear, but a shop.
I suppose the registry is little more than
an adjunct to the shop. But when I
pass, I see a great many young women
going in and out.”

“Should I have to go there to meet
them?” asked Lucy, with a look of
repugnance.

“Oh, dear, no,” Miss Latimer answered.
“That is not done save in
the big offices, unless an appointment is
desired by some mistress from the country.
Young women who seem likely to
suit are sent to wait upon you in your
house. If you decide on this, you can
go there and give instructions to-morrow
morning; I can keep house and look
after Hugh during your absence. I
wish I could give you better advice, but
I think you must avail yourself of this
for the present urgent necessity.”

Lucy accepted the counsel. She
found the address Miss Latimer gave
her. It was in one of the long roads
which skirt the centre of London—roads
which were rural once, and where, here
and there, a garden still lingers isolated
among the shops which have been built
over its neighbours. Lucy’s destination
was one of these shops set out with
servants’ caps, aprons, small haberdashery
wares, stationery, and a few
cheap books. On the little counter
was a big desk laden with ledgers and
festooned with files of letters, and behind
the desk stood an elderly woman.
She had an air of old-fashioned gentility
about her. She wore no cap, but her
glossy, waving hair, unmingled with
silver, hung in two or three curls and was
done up in a crisp little knot behind. Her
brown merino gown was severely simple
and well kept, with no frill or ornament
whatever, save an out-of-date embroidered
collar, fastened by an “In Memoriam”
brooch. There was nothing
frowsy about this woman, nothing
unctuous or self-indulgent in her thin
sharp face, nor servile or fawning in her
rather abrupt manner. Lucy was prepossessed
by her, because she was so
unlike the official at the big registry
office.

This alert person had little encouragement
to give. “Generals” were said to
be few and far between. She asked Lucy
searching questions about the situation
she had to offer, saying that the young
women would expect her to tell them
all about it before they walked so far.
She said that it would not recommend
the place to most of them that it
was very quiet; they generally thought
that meant a “particular,” fidgety
mistress, and “they didn’t mind a little
more work if they could get the more
of their own way.” Lucy said she
would prefer an elderly woman, as she
would be left much alone in the house.
But the alert person shook her head,
saying that in nine cases out of ten an
elderly woman who would take such a
place would drink—a statement which
Lucy, after her recent experience, was not
prepared to deny. The alert person promised
“to do her best.” The fee for
putting Mrs. Challoner’s name on her
“book” would be only one shilling; she
would go on sending girls till Mrs. Challoner
was “suited,” when there would
be another charge of four shillings.

Lucy walked home, feeling that she
and the post she had to offer were at a
terrible discount. As she watched the
half-starved, slipshod, ill-clad girls who
were carrying packages in and out of
various small “home” manufacturing
premises in the district through which
her journey lay, she wondered bitterly
what had gone wrong with domestic
service, that its wholesome food, snug
shelter, and respectability were rejected
in favour of this tramping, trailing
drudgery. She knew enough of social
conditions to know that few of those
girls earned wages higher than her
servant’s salary, while these had to
provide everything out of their earnings,
and her maid had to buy only
her clothes, and had plenty of leisure to
make and mend them. This proved
that no mere increase of wages will
bring back the tide of female labour
to the haven of domestic service. It
has already voluntarily ebbed away to
decreased emoluments.

This actually comforted Lucy a
little. For though she was already
paying all the wage her means could
honestly afford, yet she had begun to
reflect bitterly that, between the two
registry offices, she had already laid out
six shillings in less than two months,
not to mention “deterioration of household
stock” in burnt napery and other
kitchen damages, still less to consider
the wear and tear of her own nerves
and the loss of her own time. If she
was to go on paying and losing at this
rate, she had realised that it would
come to the same thing as offering
twenty or twenty-two pounds a year.

But as she saw those squalid workgirls,
it was borne in upon her that the form
of labour she wanted had become scarce
at any price, and that at any wage she
might find the same heart-breaking
disappointment.

Lucy gazed curiously at the crowds
of young women who lounged or hurried
past her. By the signboards on the
forlorn houses behind the decaying
gardens, she could guess the callings
of the crowd. There were tailoresses,
hat-sewers, cardboard-box makers, artificial
florists. Looking at them, Lucy
could not wish that any of them should
change her mind and seek the vacant
place in the kitchen. From their appearance
most of them had been living
poorly on sedentary work for years, and
whatever they might have been at the
beginning, they were sallow and haggard
now. No signs of self-respect were
visible on their raiment, though there was
a pitiful display of draggled plumes, and
sham jewellery worn over garments which
seemed to have been bought third-hand,
and boots such as one often sees thrown
away on road-sides. Such strength as
they had was clearly the strange perverted
strength that resists bad atmospheres
and monotonous misery, but few
indeed had any sign of the wholesome
vigour that is needed for honest household
work.

“They must have their freedom, I
suppose,” said Lucy to herself, dreamily
repeating an axiom which she had often
heard thrown down in scorn and contempt
by irate matrons caught in the
strait where she was now fixed.

Their freedom to do what? Freedom
to toil at some soul-deadening task for
eight or ten hours to earn a shilling—for
the whole round of the clock to
gain eighteenpence. Freedom to live
crowded in noisome rooms among ever-shifting
“neighbours,” to go untidy, to
eat bad food ill-cooked. Freedom on
Bank holidays with their rowdy crowds;
freedom (when one is not too tired) to
run about the gas-lit streets, or to sit in
tobacco-reeking music-halls; freedom,
in such dangerous proximity to the
hospital, the casual ward, the pauper’s
grave!

Lucy thought of what she understood by
freedom. A life of useful labour, leisure
for friendship, books, the joys of music
and of pictures, of flowers and sunset
skies, of wild wood and breezy shore.

And then she reflected. If it should
be this kind of freedom that girls wanted—the
sort of thing that Lucy herself
meant by freedom—could she promise
them that this was to be found in
average domestic service any more than{588}
that other freedom for which the poor
souls around her were willing to pay so
dear?

“The matter has got out of joint
somehow,” she thought. “New social
ideals, both good and bad, have gained
sway in these days, and I fear that the
majority of the mistresses have tried to
shut out both from influencing the ways
of domestic service. The consequence
is, the bad ideals have withdrawn the
mass of girls from household life. I
should not wonder but the mothers of
most of these girls have been domestic
servants. Yet what they have told their
daughters (possibly quite as often in
commendation and praise as in bitterness
and warning) has not attracted the girls,
because they are not living in the same
world as their mothers lived, and they
have picked up the fact that domestic
service is, in the main, left stationary
in the out-of-date sphere.”

Lucy knew that she had not got her
own progressive ideas concerning
domestic service in her own parents’
house. She had got suggestions when
visiting in the houses of schoolfellows
belonging to thoughtfully “advanced”
families, and these suggestions had
opened her eyes to see the connection
between this department of human life
and the teachings she found in the best
books she came across. Miss Latimer
herself had often been helpful. Also
when once Lucy’s days of courtship and
marriage had begun, there was a fresh
humanity in all Charlie’s ways of looking
at things, which permeated her mind,
and carried away lingering prejudices
and preconceptions as a sweet breeze
blows away the stuffiness of long-closed
chambers.

Lucy’s own mother, who had died two
years before Lucy’s marriage, had been
a matron of the old school, kind and
considerate to her servants, as she would
have been to her pony or her dog, but
with far less consideration for their
individuality than many sympathetic
people give to that of their four-footed
pets. She expected her maids to go to
her place of worship. She would have
been surprised ever to see them with a
book, save on Sunday, and then only
with books which she “lent” them.
She allowed no variation in their household
uniform, and in their “best”
dresses she looked askance at a puff or
a flounce. Their letters had to be
addressed to their unprefixed names.
No visitors were allowed. They had
their regulated “hours off” once a
week, and these were never diverged
from, varied or exceeded. A request
for an arrangement for a fortnight’s
holiday would have been met by instant
dismissal.

Even in those earlier days, when Lucy
had never questioned the righteousness
of these domestic methods, she
had yet somehow got an uneasy consciousness
that they were tottering to
their fall. She could not tell how she
had got that impression, whether from
murmurs in the kitchen or from added
tenacity in the hand laid on the domestic
reins. The house had been handsome,
well kept and comfortable; the service
perfectly regulated and reasonably well
paid, the conditions which long defer
catastrophe whether in states or households.
It had been as one of the last
strongholds of an ancient régime still
holding out, though outposts are fast
falling.

Lucy’s father had not survived his
wife many months. He had been
counted a wealthy man, but there had
been such a revolution in his special
article of commerce that when he died
his estate barely met his liabilities.
Jem Brand, the young stockbroker, had
received a small dowry with Florence
when he married her. But after the
father’s debts were paid, there was not
a penny left for Lucy, who had thankfully
utilised her natural gifts and the
excellent training they had received by
accepting the position of art teacher at
the St. George’s Institute, which position
she had filled for more than a year
before her marriage.

Perhaps Lucy had grown more inclined
to broader ways of thought and
simpler ways of life, because they had
brought its crowning joy into her own life.
Charlie Challoner had met her first in
her independent breadwinning capacity.
He was wont to say that if he had
known her as a rich man’s daughter he
would not have dared to woo her, and it
is quite certain that a young professional
man, with all his way to make, and with
neither family nor fortune to serve him,
would have received scant welcome from
either of Lucy’s parents.

All these memories glanced through
her mind as she hurried home. She
reflected too, that the present transitional
and contradictory state of the domestic
world was further indicated by the fact
that though her sister, Mrs. Brand,
held all their mother’s household
theories, yet their mother would have
disapproved far more of the Brand
ménage than she would of Lucy’s
household, as that had been conducted
during the seven years of Pollie’s service.
Surely this went to show that the
desirable results of the old order of
things were now best to be secured
under the new order!

Lucy said to herself—

“Well, I must be patient, and remember
that my own position is rather
exceptional. Domestic life, just now,
seems to be of the nature of a series
of experiments, while I stand at too
critical a corner to find such experiments
edifying or pleasant. I must do what
everybody has to do—from prime ministers
down to chimney-sweeps—make the
best of the bad job left by those who
have gone before me, and try my utmost
not to make it worse for those coming
after me!”

She entered her home, tired enough,
and knowing that there could be no rest
till bedtime. But she had made up her
mind to be cheerful at all costs. Lo, on
the hall-table lay something which made
overflowing joy to be the easiest thing
possible. There was a letter from
Charlie!

It was marked “Ship letter,” and the
last few lines (which in her bewildered
joy she read first) had evidently been
written in wild haste: “Homeward
bound ship in sight—passing close by—Grant
thinks opportunity for letter.
God bless and keep you.—Charlie.”

“God bless and keep you!” The
benediction folded her round. She was
no more tired, no more disheartened.
She was ready for anything!

And how much more so after she had
read the whole letter! All was going
well. The weather had been so propitious
that Charlie had been able to be
on deck nearly all day. He had grown
so brown and plump that he scarcely
knew his own face in the cabin looking-glass.
It was a guarantee of the calm
weather and of his own strength to
enjoy it that his diary recorded that he
and Captain Grant had played chess
every night, and that their games were
becoming prolonged and scientific.

When Miss Latimer had joined in the
rejoicing, when Hugh had had his
father’s letter to kiss, when the cat had
had it to sniff—and had been decided to
show much more interest and emotion
than when the performance was repeated
with a circular—when Lucy had written
a postcard to hurry after the letter she
had just sent to her husband—an
ecstatic postcard, “Your ship letter
received. Oh, so happy—so thankful
to God!”—when all these things were
done, then she turned back to her household
cares and burdens, strong enough
to bear the heaviest.

By this time Miss Latimer had taken
her departure, and Lucy and her little
laddie were alone. There was something
for her to do from morning till
night. She would not even call in the
service of the charwoman, for she
remembered that its results had not
been too satisfactory even upon the
perfect order and straightforwardness
that Pollie had left behind her. Mrs.
Challoner soon found that Jessie
Morison’s month of service had not
been quite so satisfactory as it had
seemed. Little things had gone astray,
little household matters, for which she
had given Jessie money, were left unpaid—the
whole amount perhaps not rising
above three or four shillings. Still, all
this determined Lucy to keep her own
hand on the household helm for the
moment. She could postpone the duties
of wardrobe and store closets which she
had assigned to herself for this last week
of leisure. She would be general servant,
nurse, and housemistress for once
before she turned breadwinner!

The weather was cold, but it was
bright and cheerful, and Lucy got
real enjoyment out of her mornings in
the genial warmth of the kitchen, with
Hugh eagerly watching and proudly
helping in those homely labours which
delight all children. Do the banquets
of after-life ever furnish such delicious
dainties as that scrap of paste,
extra from the pie-crust, which mother
or elder sister sweetens, and rolls out,
and cuts patterns upon, and pops into
the oven, all before one’s eyes, and
which we wait to see taken out crisp and
brown?

Hugh was a happy little boy in
those days. Had not papa’s letter
enclosed a scrap of paper covered with
o’s, and inscribed, “All for Hughie
himself,” and didn’t Hugh know that{589}
these meant kisses? Then there was
nothing to hinder him from trotting
after mamma all day long, and she
often sent him upstairs or downstairs to
fetch her a brush or a duster. She even
let him help her make a bed. She told
him he was “a useful little boy,” and
that praise came to his ears with a
pleasing novelty, which “a sweet
darling” or “a precious dear” had
lost. She let him watch her cleaning
his little boots, she let him try to do
it himself. That effectually convinced
him how naughty it is to dip one’s
foot in mud just for the fun of doing it.
And while these delights went on the
mother and child talked about the time
when Hugh would be a man, perhaps a
great explorer, alone in strange countries,
and how well it would be for him
to know how to do things for himself.

“Or I’ll do them for you when you’re
very, very, very old, mamma,” he had
said, and Lucy had been half-staggered
and half-amused when he had next asked
whether it would not be fully time for
him to begin next year!

“No, I don’t think I shall want much
done for me quite so soon,” she had
cheerfully replied; “but you may be
able to do something for yourself. I
think boys and all men who are not very
busy and tired out with doing other
things, ought to clean their own boots.”

“I think I’d like cleaning boots,”
said Hugh. “If papa doesn’t come
home soon, I’ll get a box and go to the
corner of the street and say, ‘A brush,
sir!’ and I’ll bring you home all the
pennies, and we’ll have a lot of money,
and you can tell papa he needn’t hurry,
I’m taking care of you.”

If here and there the childish prattle
touched chords athrill in Lucy’s heart,
there were full amends when Hugh
put his little arms about her and
whispered—

“Don’t let’s have any new servant,
mamma—you be the servant
yourself.”

“Ah, my pet,” she answered, “I’m
afraid that’s a luxury out of my reach
just now!”

She questioned herself sometimes
whether it might not have been wiser had
she never taken up her money-earning
scheme, but had simply resolved to live
within narrowest limits on their savings
during Charlie’s absence? Yet the
answer always came, that but for this
money-earning scheme, she would
scarcely have dared to propose this
journey to Charlie, and it was still less
likely that he would have entertained
the idea. All seemed turning out so
happily that perhaps such a venture
might have well been made; but before
ventures are made one has to reckon
with fears as well as with hopes, to
provide against mischance as well as to
prepare for good fortune. Also, when
Charlie should return in restored
health, however strong and cheerful
he might be, a depleted treasury would
have been a drag, which might easily
have destroyed much of the benefit
received.

Yet strong was her own longing for
quiet home life, and keen was her
consciousness that the impending arrival
of another dubious stranger was the sole
element of anxiety and difficulty following
her about among her household
tasks. From these she didn’t shrink in
the least, and she felt sure custom would
soon make them easy and pleasant.
She could not help feeling thankful that
decision or reconsideration was now out
of her reach. Her engagement with
St. George’s Institute was made for
the year, and must be honourably
fulfilled.

It was tiresome to be interrupted
in some kitchen or bed-chamber task
by a ring of the door-bell, and only to
find some obviously unsuitable “young
person” sent from the registry office.
She had to meet the half-derisive smile
with which some of them noted that
“the missus” herself had answered
the door. She had to endure the contemptuousness
of their rapid survey of
her working toilette—the white handkerchief
knotted about her hair, and
the blue-checked apron. One or two
of them at once said candidly “that
the place would not suit.” To others
she had to say the same. Yet her
week of choice was rapidly passing, and
she feared she might be forced to accept
Mrs. Brand’s advice and “not be too
particular about everything.”

Sometimes she wondered, after all, if
she and Charlie had made a mistake and
had started too ambitiously at the very
outset. Yet they had then seemed
entrenched on the safe side. Her own
kin, beginning with the Brands, had all
thought the little house with the verandah
only too small for a young man
of Charlie’s talents and prospects.

“You will have the trouble and expense
of speedy removal,” they had
urged.

These kindred had said, too, that the
furnishing was unnecessarily simple.
“That was a fault which might be
gradually remedied,” Florence Brand
had remarked. “But it was well to
make a dash at the beginning, even
if one economised afterwards, because
in the first year of one’s married
life people noticed one’s house more and
talked about it more than they ever did
afterwards.” But Charlie and Lucy
had been firm, because they were
determined not to run in debt, because
they wanted to save as much as they
could, to possess nothing that would
be costly in its up-keep, or likely to
tempt them into expensive ways, and
because they both loved the beauty of
simple form and the sweet cleanliness
of things that are easy to dust and
possible to wash.

Then Florence had privately urged
Lucy to start with two servants.

“Get two smart girls for low wages,”
she had said, “you won’t have much
to do for a long time, except to watch
that they are honest. It sounds well to
say ‘my cook’ and ‘my housemaid.’
People think of a general servant as a
mere slavey.”

But Lucy had steadily persisted in
having only one, and Pollie’s diligence
and progress had rewarded her.

Now, however, Lucy asked herself
whether Charlie and she had done the
very best after all. True, they had not
satisfied the ideas of the Brands and
others; but ought they not to have gone
still farther in the opposite direction
and contented themselves with a tiny
flat and foregone any regular servant?
It was true that the plan they had
followed had been sound enough
economically. The lease of the little
house in Pelham Street had been bought
by Charlie’s prenuptial savings, and the
yearly expenditure had not been much
larger than it must have been in the
imaginary flat, Pollie’s domestic help
having given Lucy time to do all the
family needlework and to economise in
those ways which leisure makes consistent
with grace and beauty. To Lucy the life
seemed to have been idyllic. But, then,
at its foundation had been Pollie. So, if
Pollies were an element not to be readily
reckoned upon, life only was secure when
it was planned to do without them.

(To be continued.)

{590}

STRAY LEAVES FROM ASSAM.

TWO WIVES.

“And my man?”

“Your man was shot down amongst the
first who fell.”

The questioner turned away without a word,
and lifting her child from the ground, slung it
in her cloth and left the bungalow.

A terrible disaster had occurred. A political
officer had been attacked and killed, and his
escort cut to pieces, by the Angami Nagas.
A few of the survivors had succeeded in
reaching the stockade, and one of them—a
bright young fellow who had marched out
two days before, leaving behind him a one-week’s
bride—was having an ugly wound on
his head dressed by the native doctor.

A crowd of terrified women surrounded
him, eager to hear his fearful tale, and by
degrees they learnt the truth—not one could
hope her husband had escaped, for he believed
himself and one companion to be the only
survivors out of eighty men. It was a sad
tale of mismanagement, treachery, and bloodshed.

“We were in a trap,” the young fellow
explained in broken sentences. “They fired
upon us suddenly and killed a lot before we
could escape to open ground. Kama Ram
got us together at the foot of the hills, and we
fought hard until he fell.”

A fair-faced Nepalese woman covered her
face with her cloth and broke into low sobs.

“Yes,” he continued, “we fought hard;
but half our men were killed, and the Nagas
were there in hundreds. If we could have
kept them off till dark we might have got
away; but they surrounded us, and after
Kama Ram was shot there was no one to
lead us, and we got broken up and scattered.
He told us to leave him there and fight our
way back to warn the Sahib at Kohima; but
how could we leave him? We carried him
away, firing and then retreating. And so we
got away, a few of us; but Kama Ram was
heavy—was he not a big man?—and he said,
‘Oh, brothers, let me alone to die! I am
dying now, and you must save your lives and
get back to Kohima and help the Sahib;
they will go there. You cannot save me.
Put me where they cannot find me, as they
will take my head.’ And then he died. We
hid his body well, and then came on, and
only two of us are here, and the Nagas are
now on their way; they wait to take the
heads. By daybreak they will come.”

The little Nepalese woman crept quietly
away. Her child was sleeping in a corner of
the over-crowded room, and she sat by him
with her head turned against the wall and
cried not loudly but most bitterly.

“What is the use of crying?” asked the
other women in high-pitched trembling voices.
“We shall be killed too in the morning.”

“Yes,” said the wounded man, “we shall
all be killed. There are thousands of them
coming on us.”

Then came the quiet question from a broad-faced
rosy Naga woman—

“And my man—did you see him?”

Without the slightest sign of sympathy or
feeling the curt answer came—

“Your man was shot down amongst the
first that fell.”

Without a word she went away. None of
the women had any sympathy to waste upon
a Naga woman, even though her husband had
been a constable and she had left her home
and people to live with him. No one
attempted to detain her, or said a kind word
as she passed.

Following her out, I asked her why she
went away, and warned her not to go. Her
child would probably be killed by the first
Angamis that she met, because her husband
was well known.

“They will not harm the child. I must go
and find my husband,” she replied, and passed
on into the darkness and the rain. The
chance of finding him alive urged her to hurry
on. If he had fallen in the first attack, she
knew the place, and made her way straight
for it. But perhaps he was not killed. He
might have been one of those who had rolled
down the steep khud from the narrow pathway
where they fell, and she would find him
wounded, but safely hidden, at the bottom of
the khud. If he was dead, she might yet be
in time to save his head and bury him, and
hide him from the cruel hands of her savage
countrymen.

The Nagas met her on her way and jeered
at her, asking her where her Sepoy husband
was; but still they let her pass, and on she
went. Who can describe the horrors of that
journey!

The darkness hid many a ghastly sight,
but daybreak found her near the scene of
her disaster. Murdered men lay across her
path headless, with gaping wounds; shrieks
of despair rang in her ears from many a poor
wounded wretch who had escaped in the
night only to fall into the hands of his
enemies in the morning; and yells of fiendish
triumph went up as each new victim was
discovered and despatched.

Esmé.

{591}

SOME HOLIDAY MUSIC.

Fine fun can be had out of two action songs
by William Younge and Lionel Elliott (J.
Williams). They just suit the merry season
for youngsters of the family who must have
amusing and interesting ideas to keep themselves
and others happy. One is called
“Home for the Holidays,” and the other,
“Making the Pudding.”

For our tiny nursery people there is a really
capital shilling book by Florence Wickins, consisting
of “Merry little tunes, including all
the original melodies to the nursery rhymes
and a complete set of dance music for little
folk” (Wickins & Co.). It is in clear, big
print, with a gay cover, and there are some
dear old favourites therein, such as the undying
Miss Muffet, Tom Tucker, Lucy Locket,
Baby Bunting, and other heroes and heroines
of nursery lore in days of yore.

Schoolboys and schoolgirls too will join
with fervour in Scott-Gatty’s new “Country
House Songs” on “Golf” and “Cricket”
(Boosey), and these will not fail to attract
boys and girls of an older growth, so admirable
are they.

Some stirring ditties suitable for musical
entertainments after schoolroom teas are two
rousing naval and military lays with telling
refrains, namely, “Beresford’s Boys,” by
Lionel Hume (Weekes), and “The Life of a
Soldier,” by Gerald Lane (Enoch); “Two
Gay Owls,” by M. Van Lennep (Doremi),
with characteristic “tu-whit to-whoos” capable
of expressive rendering, and “De Blue-Tailed
Fly,” a plantation song by G. H. Clutsam
(Stanley Lucas), the buzzing chorus of
which can be given with much dramatic
feeling!

Pretty little light pieces, all suitable for
bright occasions, interludes for tableaux,
charades, &c., are the following: “Danse
Chic,” by Arnold Olding (Cramer); “Mountain
Gnomes,” by Wilhelm Popp (Ashdown);
“La Lucette,” by Gladys Hope (Weekes);
“Vous Dansez Marquise,” by Augusta de
Kabath (J. Williams); “Chanson de Louis
Seize,” by G. Bachmann (Ashdown); and a
small book of “Three Dances” by Corelli
Windeatt (J. Williams).

These popular marches are desirable for the
same purposes, namely, “Santiago,” by
Walter von Joel (Ashdown); “The Charge
at Dargai” (Cramer); and the “British
Outpost,” by Lionel Hume (Weekes); while
the quicker polka marches of “Gringalet”
and “Automobiles,” both by Ad. Gauwin
(Chappell), are spirited in music and in
dashing frontispieces. Two nice little operettas
for children are “Cock Robin and
Jenny Wren,” by Florian Pascal, and “The
Maid and the Blackbird,” by Ed. Solomon
(J. Williams).

James C. Beazley writes a humorous and
useful little partsong entitled, “There was a
Little Man” (Doremi), who, as we know,
“had a little gun,” and this sporting episode
is facetiously and effectually carried out in
the music.

Songs from Lewis Carroll’s “Sylvie and
Bruno” (all in one small cover) are most
amusingly quaint. Listen to the euphony of
“King Fisher’s Song.”

And other lines linger in our memories like—

and so on in the inimitable spirit of “Alice
in Wonderland” again.

The “Witch o’ the Broom” Lancers and
Quadrilles by Fabian Rose (Phillips and
Page) are as easy as easy to play from sight,
so is “The Farmyard” Barn-dance, with a
racy title-page for small folk (Phillips and
Page), and in a loftier sphere the “Malmaison”
Waltz by Caroline Lowthian (Metzler),
and “Poppyland” Waltz by Cyril Dare
(Cramer).

There are four “Characteristic Dances” by
H. J. Taylor (Weekes), all of which might be
prettily danced in character, the Grecian (No.
2) and the Japanese (No. 4) especially.

Some exceedingly facile and effective violin
solos are No. 1, “The Children’s Home”
of Cowen’s, and No. 10, Canzonetta by C.
Borelli, of Morley’s Melodious Gems; “Sunny
Memories” and “Good Wishes,” by Henry
Tolhurst (Phillips and Page); a “Song
Without Words,” by M. Marigold (Novello),
and a convenient shilling book (Wickins)
containing the beautiful “Träumerei” of
Schumann and other choice little pieces for
pleasurable performance. “Twelve Carols,”
by M. C. Gillington and F. Pascal, are full
of interest and of beautiful and original ideas
in words and music (J. Williams).

Mary Augusta Salmond.