THE GIRL’S OWN
PAPER

ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.

By JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of “A Girl in Springtime,” “Sisters Three,” etc.

THE INTRODUCTION. (See CHAP. III.)

All rights reserved.]

CHAPTER I.

The afternoon post had come in, and
the Vicar of Renton stood in the large
bay window of his library reading his
budget of letters. He was a tall, thin
man, with a close shaven face, which
had no beauty of feature, but which was
wonderfully attractive all the same. It
was not an old face, but it was deeply
lined, and those who knew and loved
him best could tell the history and
meaning of each of those eloquent
tracings. The deep vertical mark running
up the forehead meant sorrow. It
had been stamped there for ever on the
night when Hubert, his first-born, had
been brought back, cold and lifeless,
from the river to which he had hurried
forth but an hour before, a picture of
happy boyhood, in his white boating
flannels. The Vicar’s brow had been
smooth enough before that day; the
furrow was graven to the memory of
Teddy, the golden-haired lad who had
first taught him the joys of fatherhood.
The network of little lines about the
eyes were caused by the hundred and
one little worries of every-day life, and
the strain of working a delicate body{18}
to its fullest pitch; and the two long,
deep streaks down the cheeks bore
testimony to that happy sense of humour
which showed the bright side of a question,
and helped him out of many a
slough of despair. This afternoon, as
he stood reading his letters one by one,
the different lines deepened, or smoothed
out, according to the nature of the
missive. Now he smiled, now he sighed,
anon he crumpled up his face in puzzled
thought, until the last letter of all was
reached, when he did all three in succession,
ending up with a low whistle of
surprise—

“Edith! This is from Mrs. Saville.
Just look at this!”

Instantly there came a sound of
hurried rising from the other end of the
room; a wicker-work basket swayed to
and fro on a rickety gipsy table, and
the Vicar’s wife walked hurriedly towards
him, rolling half-a-dozen reels of
thread in her wake, with an air of fine
indifference.

“Mrs. Saville!” she exclaimed
eagerly. “How is my boy?” and
without waiting for an answer she
seized the letter and began to devour its
contents, while her husband went stooping
about over the floor picking up the
contents of the scattered basket and
putting them carefully back in their
places. He smiled to himself as he did
so, and kept turning amused, tender,
little glances at his wife as she stood in
the uncarpeted space in the window,
with the sunshine pouring in on her
eager face. Mrs. Asplin had been
married for twenty years and was the
mother of three big children, but such
was the buoyancy of her Irish nature
and the irrepressible cheeriness of her
heart, that she was in good truth the
very youngest person in the house, so
that her own daughters were sometimes
quite shocked at her levity of behaviour,
and treated her with gentle, motherly
restraint. She was tall and thin like
her husband, and he, at least, considered
her every whit as beautiful as
she had been a score of years before.
Her hair was dark and curly; she had
deep-set grey eyes and a pretty fresh
complexion. When she was well and
rushing about in her usual breathless
fashion, she looked like the sister of her
own tall girls; and when she was ill,
and the dark lines showed under her
eyes, she looked like a tired, wearied
girl, but never for a moment as if she
deserved such a title as an old or elderly
woman. Now, as she read, her eyes
glowed, and she uttered ecstatic little
exclamations of triumph from time to
time, for Arthur Saville, the son of the
lady who was the writer of the letter,
had been the first pupil whom her husband
had taken into his house to coach,
and as such had a special claim on her
affection. For the first dozen years of
their marriage all had gone smoothly
and well with Mr. and Mrs. Asplin, and
the vicar had had more work than he
could manage in his busy city parish;
then, alas, lung trouble had threatened;
he had been obliged to take a year’s
rest, and to exchange his living for a
sleepy little parish, where he could
breathe fresh air, and take life at a
slower pace. Illness, the doctor’s bills,
the year’s holiday, ran away with a
large sum of money; the stipend of the
country church was by no means generous,
and the vicar was lamenting the
fact that he was shortest of money just
when his children were growing up and
he needed it most, when an old college
friend, Major Saville, requested, as a
favour, that he would undertake the
education of his only son, for a year at
least, so that he might be well grounded
in his studies before going on to the
military tutor who was to prepare him
for Sandhurst. Handsome terms were
quoted, the vicar looked upon the offer
as a leading of Providence, and Arthur
Saville’s stay at the Rectory proved a
success in every sense of the word. He
was a clever boy who was not afraid of
work, and the vicar discovered in himself
an unsuspected genius for teaching.
Arthur’s progress not only filled him
with delight, but brought the offer of
other pupils, so that he was but the
forerunner of a succession of bright,
handsome boys, who came from far and
wide to be prepared for college, and to
make their home at the vicarage. They
were honest, healthy-minded lads, and
Mrs. Asplin loved them all, but no one
had ever taken Arthur Saville’s place.
During the year which he had spent
under her roof he had broken his
collar bone, sprained his ankle, nearly
chopped off the top of one of his
fingers, scalded his foot, and fallen
crash through a plate-glass window.
There had never been one moment’s
peace or quietness; she had gone about
from morning to night in chronic fear
of a disaster; and, as a matter of course,
it followed that Arthur was her darling,
ensconced in a little niche of his own,
from which subsequent pupils tried in
vain to oust him.

Mrs. Saville dwelt upon the latest
successes of her clever son with a
mother’s pride, and his second mother
beamed and smiled and cried, “I told
you so!” “Dear boy!” “Of course
he did!” in delighted echo. But when
she came to the second half of the letter
her face changed, and she grew grave
and anxious. “And now, dear Mr.
Asplin,” Mrs. Saville wrote, “I come
to the real burden of my letter. I return
to India in autumn, and am most
anxious to see Peggy happily settled before
I leave. She has been at this
Brighton school for four years, and has
done well with her lessons, but the poor
child seems so unhappy at the thought
of returning, that I am sorely troubled
about her. Like most Indian children,
she has had very little home life, and
after being with me for the last six
months, she dreads the prospect of
school, and I cannot bear the thought
of sending her back against her will.
I was puzzling over the question yesterday,
when it suddenly occurred to me
that perhaps you, dear Mr. Asplin,
could help me out of my difficulty.
Could you—would you, take her in hand
for the next three years, letting her share
the lessons of your own two girls? I
cannot tell you what a relief and joy it
would be to feel that she was under your
care. Arthur always looks back on the
year spent with you as one of the
brightest of his life; and I am sure
Peggy would be equally happy. I write
to you from force of habit, but really I
think this letter should have been addressed
to Mrs. Asplin, for it is she
who would be most concerned. I know
her heart is large enough to mother my
dear girl during my absence, and if
strength and time will allow her to
undertake this fresh charge, I think she
will be glad to help another mother by
doing so. Peggy is bright and clever
like her brother, and strong on the
whole, though her throat needs care.
She is nearly fifteen—the age, I think,
of your youngest girl, and we should be
pleased to pay the same terms as we did
for Arthur. Now, please, dear Mr.
Asplin, talk the matter over with your
wife, and let me know your decision as
soon as possible.”

Mrs. Asplin dropped the letter on
the floor and turned to confront her
husband.

“Well!”

“Well?”

“It is your affair, dear, not mine.
You would have the trouble. Could you
do with an extra child in the house?”

“Yes, yes, so far as that goes. The
more the merrier. I should like to help
Arthur’s mother, but——” Mrs. Asplin
leant her head on one side, and put
on what her children described as her
“ways and means” expression. She
was saying to herself, clear out the box
room over the study. Spare chest of
drawers from dressing-room—cover a
box with one of the old chintz curtains
for an ottoman—enamel the old blue
furniture—new carpet and bedstead, say
five or six pounds outlay—yes! I think
I could make it pretty for five pounds.
The calculations lasted for about two
minutes, at the end of which time her
brow cleared, she nodded brightly, and
said in a crisp, decisive tone, “Yes, we
will take her. Arthur’s throat was
delicate too. She must use my gargle.”

The vicar laughed softly.

“Ah! I thought that would decide
it. I knew your soft heart would not
be able to resist the thought of that
delicate throat! Well, dear, if you are
willing, so am I. I am glad to make
hay while the sun shines, and lay by a
little provision for the children. How
will they take it, do you think? They
are accustomed to strange boys, but a
girl will be a new experience. She will
come at once, I suppose, and settle
down to work for the autumn. Dear
me! dear me? It is the unexpected
that happens. I hope she is a nice
child.”

“Of course she is. She is Arthur’s
sister. Come! the young folks are in
the study. Let us go and tell them the
news. I have always said it was my
ambition to have half-a-dozen children,
and now, at last, it is going to be
gratified.”

Mrs. Asplin thrust her hand through
her husband’s arm, and led him out of
the room, down the wide flagged hall,
towards the distant room whence the
sound of merry young voices fell
pleasantly on the ear.

(To be continued.)

OUR PUZZLE POEM REPORT: “PREPOSITIONS.”

SOLUTION.

Prepositions.

Prize Winners

Ten Shillings Each.

• Lily Belling, Wribbenhall, Bewdley, Worcestershire.
• Isabel Borrow, 219, Evering Road, Upper Clapton.
• M. A. C. Crabb, c/o Miss May, 10, Beaufort East, Bath.
• Edmund T. Loader, 5, Richmond Terrace, Brighton.
• Nellie Meikle, 2, Newsham Drive, Liverpool.
• M. Theodora Moxom, Hillside, Ilfracombe.
• Hilda Pickering, 42, Linnæus Street, Hull.
• Elizabeth Yarwood, 59, Beech Road, Cale Green, Stockport.

Five Shillings Each.

• Eliza Acworth, 9, Blenheim Mount, Bradford.
• Nannette Bewley, 40, Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin.
• M. S. Bourne, 14, The Broadway, Bromley, Kent.
• Ellen H. Kemp, Haughley Vicarage, Suffolk.
• Ethel C. McMaster, 23, Ross Road, Wallington, Surrey.
• Mabel Wheeler, Holmesdale, Winkfield, Windsor.

Very Highly Commended.

Rev. S. Bell, E. Blunt, J. A. Center, Edith
Collins, R. D. Davis, E. M. Le Mottee, Jas.
S. Middleton, Alice M. Motum, H. W. Musgrave,
J. D. Musgrave, Mrs. Nicholls, Gertrude
Smith, Ellen C. Tarrant, Violet C. Todd,
Horace Williams.

Highly Commended.

Guy Baily, Elizabeth A. Collins, Eva Gammage,
Mrs. A. D. Harris, Edward St. G.
Hodson, Edith L. Howse, Annie G. Luck,
May Merrall, F. Miller, Margaret G. Oliver,
E. Phillips, M. G. Phillips, Alice M. Seaman,
Katie Whitmore.

Honourable Mention.

Mrs. Adkins, Muriel V. Angel, Mrs. Astbury,
Mrs. L. Bishop, M. Bolingbroke, Louie
Bull, Helen M. Coulthard, Constance Daphne,
B. Duret, Annie K. Edwards, C. M. A. Fitzgerald,
Edith E. Grundy, Edith M. Higgs, S.
D. Honeyburne, J. Hunt, Ethel L. Jollye,
Edith B. Jowett, Carlina V. M. Leggett,
Mrs. R. Mason, Wm. E. Parker, A. A. L.
Shave, Helen Singleton, Clara Souter, W.
Fitzjames White, Emily Wilkinson, Henry
Wilkinson, Amy G. Wiltshire, Emily C.
Woodward, Diana C. Yeo, Sophia Yeo.

EXAMINERS’ REPORT.

The general opinion seems to be that “Prepositions”
was a very difficult puzzle. It was
certainly unpopular, judging by the number of
solutions sent in, but we were inclined to think
that this was accounted for by the subject.
Who wants to learn anything about prepositions
in the middle of summer, and who would be
so extremely foolish as to spend any of the
precious—not to say “honied”—hours over a
grammatical puzzle? In the summer of 1897
about fifteen hundred individuals tried to unravel
a page full of curious suppositions. But
then suppositions are always dear to the girl
mind, while prepositions seldom are, because
they pertain to a science which the girl mind
(as a rule) little understands. So the subject
repelled, and as the difficulty also repelled, we
begin to be surprised that there were any solutions
at all.

With these unpopular features to contend
with, it was particularly unfortunate that the
puzzle should have been marred by two serious
mistakes. In line 11 no amount of solving
ingenuity could convert gr divided by rown
into “grown,” though a shrewd guess helped
nearly all the solvers to the right word. In
line 15 the minus sign should have been the
sign of division, giving hold divided by u.
The point of this mistake was not so widely
apprehended, and no wonder.

Of the rest of the puzzle little need be said.
Probably the ninth line was the most obscure,
and it needed a truly expert solver to discover
that lake plus a short line (inserted in the right
place) becomes take. The waits were now and
then taken for a German band, giving the
quaint reading, “But if you take a German
noun.” Obviously, the alteration that an
English preposition would undergo if tacked
on to a German noun would be extremely
serious, though the precise nature of it would
not be easy to define. Many solvers failed to
notice that an e was left out of different in
line 12. The word was intended to be so
written, with of course the addition of an
apostrophe, because of the rhythm.

We must not fail to thank M. T. M. for
her exceedingly kind and encouraging letter.
Referring to our puzzles generally she writes:
“I am an invalid, and the diversion of thought
and interest is very welcome to me.” It is
indeed good for us to know that even our
more frivolous efforts can be so helpful, and
no form of commendation could give us more
sincere pleasure.

We append our foreign award on Fluctuations.
It is rather late, but we have been
anxious to include solutions from the remotest
parts of the world. One comes to us from
Coomooboolaroo, wherever that may be, and
the author mildly suggests that she is afraid
her solutions do not arrive in time as she has
never had honourable mention. Now that we
allow a reasonable extension of time, we hope
the writer will continue to solve, for if The
Girl’s Own Paper can reach even a place
with eight os in it so can a Puzzle Poem
Prize.

It is very odd, but a puzzle which is popular
at home is certain also to be popular abroad.

FOREIGN AWARD.

Fluctuations.

Prize Winners (Seven Shillings Each).

• Charles Glasgow, 6A, Sleater Road, Tardeo, Bombay.
• Clara and Edith Hardy, Finch Street, East
  Malvern, Victoria, Australia.
• Ada F. Sykes, 1, Grant’s Lane, Calcutta.

Very Highly Commended.

Ivie D. Ashton, Gertrude Burden (Australia),
Ethel Danford (Canada), Lillian Dobson
(Australia), Aveline Gall (Demerara), Maggie
Glasgow, Mrs. Hardy (Australia), Mrs. Manners,
Maud C. Ogilvie (India).

Highly Commended.

Evalyn Austin (Australia), M. C. C. (Ceylon),
Mrs. F. Christian, Lily Harman, Harry John
(India), Philippa M. Kemlo (Cape Colony),
Elizabeth Lang (France), Frances A. L. Macharg
(S. Africa), Grace Rhodes (Australia),
Frances E. Scott (Austria), Mrs. Sprigg,
Mrs. F. H. le Sueur (Cape Colony), A. G.
Taylor (Australia), Dora M. C. Webbe (New
York).

Honourable Mention.

Mrs. G. Barnard (Australia), Annie Barrow
(Switzerland), Winifred Bizzey (Canada),
Mabel E. Broughton (Australia), Marcelle
Crasenster (Belgium), Elsie V. Davies, Barton
Egan (Australia), Hattie L. Elliot (Canada),
Lena Gahan (Burma), Ethel L. Glendenning
(New Zealand), Dora von Grabmayr (Austria),
Agnes Henderson (S. Africa), Violet Hewett
(Canada), A. Hood (France), Annie Jackson,
Mabel C. King (Canada), Blanche Kirkup
(Russia), Mina J. Knop (India), Percival Laker
(Australia), Mrs. J. R. Lee (Burma), Annie
Leipoldt (S. Africa), Mrs. G. Marrett (India),
Gertrude E. Moore, Amy F. Moore-Jones
(New Zealand), Annie Orbiston (Australia),
E. Nina Reid (New Zealand), Hilda D’Rozario
(India), A. Shannon (Australia), Laura
O’Suleivan (Burma), J. S. Summers (India),
Gladys Wilding (New Zealand), Elsie M.
Wylie (New Zealand).

TAME VOLES.

One day last August, when strolling in a
secluded part of my garden, I was surprised
to see some little brown mice playing about
and racing after each other without at all
regarding my presence.

I stood and watched these playful gambols,
and soon discovered that the little animals
were short-tailed field-mice, or voles, as I
believe they ought to be called. Some
differences in structure separate the voles from
the true mice and rats; they also differ in
their food, the voles being almost entirely
vegetable feeders.

The water-rat, so called, is a vole and a
perfectly harmless little animal. I often
endeavour to explain this fact to farmers and
working-men, who seem to think they have
done something meritorious when they have
hunted to death one of these voles, whose
harmless diet consists chiefly of duckweed,
flag, rushes, and other water-plants; but,
unfortunately, it looks like a land rat, and so
it has to suffer for the evil reputation of its
relative.

There are two small voles, the red field-vole
and this commoner short-tailed species which
inhabits my garden.

I had often wished to catch and keep these
little animals as pets for purposes of study;
and, finding some specimens already so tame,
I began to entice them to come to a special
place under a stone archway by daily strewing
at exactly the same spot some oatmeal and
canary seed.

Very soon the tiny creatures would allow
me to stand and watch them feeding, and I
drew nearer and nearer until I could almost
touch them.

I then put a mouse-cage under the arch in
the hope that they might accept it as a home
and thus be led into voluntary captivity. This
new idea met with a measure of approval, for
one little vole scooped out a small cavity
beneath the cage and appeared to make itself
quite at home there, even allowing me to lift
up the cage without moving, gazing curiously
at me with its small black eyes.

This went on from August until October.
The voles and I grew to be quite good friends;
but, as the colder weather would soon be
hindering my daily visits, our friendship would
have to cease unless I could bring my small
pets indoors.

VOLE, THIRTEEN DAYS OLD.

It struck me that they might be coaxed
into captivity by another device. I placed a
glass globe under the arch, containing their
favourite food, and a piece of wood leaning
against the globe to enable the mice to climb
up and leap in.

When I went next morning there was a
little vole inside the globe and by no means
frightened, for it allowed me to stroke its soft
fur without alarm.

VOLE, THREE DAYS OLD.

I have had great pleasure in watching the
graceful attitudes of this small creature. It
sits up like a squirrel holding a grain of wheat
in its paws; then, its meal over, it thoroughly
cleans its fur, brushes its whiskers, and performs
a careful toilet before going to sleep,
curled up in a lump of cotton wool and moss.

My ultimate aim being to obtain some baby
voles to be trained into absolute tameness, I
set to work to secure a mate, and placed the
globe as before, baited with tempting food.

In a few days’ time I caught a second
vole, and now Darby and Joan live happily
together in a square glass case where they
have room for exercise and where I can see
and record their doings.

All this may seem to some readers exceedingly
trivial and not worth writing about;
but, seeing that we cannot be all day out-of-doors
making observations about these and
other subjects of study, there seems some
use in keeping creatures in happy captivity,
because one can thus become ultimately
acquainted with them and learn many facts
about their life and habits which would otherwise
be difficult or impossible to observe.

I am now testing their liking for various
plants, and after a time I may be able to
make a list of the weeds they consume which
may possibly be a set-off to the damage they
do in other directions.

Voles have an acute sense of smell, as I
learn in this way. The little pair may be
sound asleep in their bed of moss and wool,
but I no sooner place an earthy root of
groundsel or chickweed in their glass case
than I see an inquisitive nose at the entrance
of the dormitory sniffing the air, and in another
minute out comes mousie to enjoy the feast of
fresh greenery.

The winter passed by uneventfully, until on
the morning of January 26th I heard quite
loud growls and squeaks proceeding from the
voles’ residence.

The cotton-wool quivered and was upheaved
by unseen forces. Something serious
must evidently be going on, so I cautiously
interfered.

In lifting the woollen mass I disturbed four
little sprawling infants of a bright pink colour
and no particular shape! They were, of
course, speedily replaced, and I could well
understand the state of affairs.

THE VOLE’S RETREAT.

The father mouse must be removed somehow{21}
as he was evidently in the way and quite
upsetting the nursery arrangements, but how I
was to tell which was which was a real puzzle.

I thought I would try to learn a lesson
from the wise king of old and see whether
maternal love would not prove a sure test. I
thought I would allow the vole that first
returned to the nest to remain and place the
other in a separate globe.

The plan was successful, for the mother
mouse went back to the nest at once and set
to work to repair the dwelling which I had
somewhat disarranged.

The young voles were by no means beautiful.
Bright red in colour, the thin hairless, almost
transparent, skin allowed one to see the
beating of the heart and its circulation very
plainly.

The head was nearly half the length of the
body, and the eyes were, of course, closely
shut, yet, feeble though they were, when only
two days old the small creatures were full of
life, and resented being touched by giving
angry little kicks and plunges. Indeed, I
never knew any family so forward.

I purposely stroked and handled the four
small mites daily so that they might grow up
to be perfectly tame from their babyhood. In
doing this I noted one or two rather curious
traits of instinct.

Whilst still quite blind, the young voles, if
placed on a table, would invariably creep
backwards and continue a retrograde movement,
until at last they would have fallen over
the edge of the table if I had allowed them to
do so.

I imagine nature teaches this evolution so
that, in their native burrow, these defenceless
weak young creatures may invariably retreat as
far back as possible out of the reach of danger.

About ten days later, whilst I was holding
one of the young voles in my hand in order to
take its portrait, it surprised me by sitting up
and beginning to clean its fur and whiskers as
carefully and neatly as if it had been a cat by
the fireside, even licking each little paw in
succession until its toilet was complete. The
creature was only thirteen days old and still
quite blind, so it shows how soon instinct teaches
the important lesson of cleanliness.

On the morning of the fourteenth day the
little mice could see and became quite enterprising,
nibbling lettuce leaves and oatmeal
and roaming about their small domain. A
little later on they could feed themselves, and
I believe I ought then to have taken away the
hard-worked little mother, for I imagine
family cares and worries must have accounted
for my finding poor Joan had died on the very
day when I purposed letting her and her mate
have their liberty.

I set Darby free in his old home under the
archway, where no doubt he will soon find
another mate, and I shall probably discover
by their depredations in my garden that he
has reared strong and healthy families to prey
upon my cherished plants and trees.

At present the young voles are by no means
tame, and still indulge in kicking, squeaking,
and scratching if I attempt to stroke them,
but I have learnt a good deal about their
domestic life and derived a great deal of
amusement from my experiment in vole-rearing.

Eliza Brightwen.

DARBY AND JOAN.

“OUR HERO.”

A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.

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

CHAPTER II.

HOW MOLLY HEARD THE NEWS.

“Molly, Molly, listen to me. I’ve
something to tell you, Molly.”

“What is it?”

“Put that book down. What are
you reading? The History of a Good
Little Girl. Oh, I know; and there
was a naughty boy, who tied a string
across the stairs, and the grannie
tumbled down and broke her leg. That’s
all; at least, she got well again, and he
was sorry, and never did anything
naughty again. So now you know, and
you can stop. Listen to me, Molly.”

Roy jerked the book out of his twin-sister’s
hands. It was not a handsome
and well-illustrated volume, like those
now in vogue, but it was bound in dull
boards, and the woodcuts were fantastically
hideous. To Molly Baron, who
had never seen anything better, such a
volume brought delight. She loved
reading, while Roy hated it, unless he
found a book about battles.

Molly had a pale little face, with large
anxious black eyes, and short dark hair,
brushed smoothly back. She wore a
frock of thick blue stuff, short-waisted
and low-necked, while her thin brown
arms were bare.

Nobody else was in the schoolroom,
which served also as a playroom for the
two children. Its furniture was scanty,
including no easy-chairs or footstools,
but only straight-backed hard-seated
chairs and backless wooden stools.
Mrs. Baron was a mother unusually
given to the expression of tender feeling,
in a sterner age than this of ours; but
even she never dreamt of permitting her
children opportunities for lounging.
They had to grow up straight-backed,
whatever might befall.

In this room Roy and Molly had done
all their lessons together, till Roy
reached the age of nine years; and
the day on which he began to attend a
day-school had witnessed the first deep
desolation of little Molly’s heart. An
ever-present dread was upon her of the
coming time—she knew it must come—when
he would be sent away to a boarding-school,
and she would be left alone.
But as yet no date had been named to
her, and she hugged the present condition
of affairs, trying to believe that it
would go on indefinitely.

Since Molly had read the book at{22}
least six times already, she made no
protest, but simply waited to hear the
news.

“Guess what’s going to happen.
Guess, Molly.”

“How can I tell? What sort of
thing?”

“I’m going to France—to Paris!”

Roy turned head over heels, and came
right side up again.

“Why? What for? Why are we
going?”

“I didn’t say you. I said I was.
Papa and mamma mean to take me with
them. And Den too.”

“And not—me!”

Molly held up her head resolutely,
trying not to let even her lips quiver.
She gazed hard at the opposite wall.

Roy was far too much absorbed with
his own prospects to notice her distress.
To leave Molly for the delights of foreign
travel meant nothing to him, though,
had she been the one to go, and he the
one to stay behind, he would no doubt
have felt differently. In all their lives
the twins had never yet been separated
for more than one or two nights. Naturally,
however, when the first real separation
came, it would mean more to the
girl than to the boy. Roy had to the
full a boy’s love of novelty.

“We shall go over the sea, and then
I shall know how the sailors feel. If I
wasn’t going to be a soldier I should
want to be a sailor; but of course I’m
going to be what papa and Den are,
and I like that best, only I’ve got to wait
longer for it. And we shall stay in Paris,
and there will be mounseers everywhere.
Won’t that be funny? And I shall
write and tell you all about it”—as her
silence dawned upon him. “And you’ll
have Jack and Polly, you know.”

“If I was going to Paris, would you
think Jack and Polly enough instead?”
demanded Molly, out of her sore heart,
still staring fixedly at the wall. A great
lump was struggling in her throat.

“But you’re not going, and I am.
And you and Jack can have fun together.”

“Jack’s grown up; he isn’t a boy,
like you.” Molly would have liked
much to add, “He isn’t my twin, Roy,”
but at the bare idea of saying such words
her whole heart seemed to rise up in one
huge billow, and very nearly swamped
her self-control. She had to clench her
hands and to bite her lips fiercely. If
Roy did not care about leaving her, she
was not going to let him see that she
cared about losing him.

Roy seated himself astride on a chair,
with his face to the back, and told his
tale. He described his position outside
the drawing-room window, and related
the stray words which had reached his
ears, making no secret of the fact that
he had done his best to hear more. A
glitter appeared in Molly’s eyes, as she
listened, and when the story was ended
she said, with a catch of her breath—

“I think I shouldn’t be so glad to go
if—if you—weren’t going too. And I
shouldn’t like to be you, to have listened
on the sly. It was mean.”

Roy sat motionless. That view of the
matter had not yet occurred to him.
He dismissed Molly’s first words as unimportant,
being merely a girl’s unreasonable
view of things, with which he
as a boy could not be expected to
agree. But that he—Roy Baron, son of
a Colonel in His Majesty’s Guards—should
be accused of “meanness!”
The word stung sharply. Roy always
pictured his own future in connection
with a scarlet coat, a three-cornered
cocked hat, a beautiful pigtail, and the
stiffest of military stocks to hold up his
chin. He knew something of a soldier’s
sense of honour, and even now he felt
ready to fight his country’s battles.
And that he should be accused of meanness—and
by a girl!

“I do think so,” Molly added. “It
was horridly mean. Prying into what
you weren’t meant to hear! And then
coming and telling me! If I had done
such a thing, you’d have been the first
to call it mean.”

Roy stood bolt upright.

“You needn’t have said it to me like
that!” he said. “You might have
told me, Molly—different, somehow.
But I wouldn’t be mean for anything,
and I’m going to tell papa, straight
off.”

Roy did not ask Molly to go with
him, and she was keenly sensible of the
omission. He marched off alone, carrying
his head as high as if the military
stock had already encircled his throat.
When he went into the drawing-room
there was a pause in the conversation;
and this seemed to show that Molly was
in the right. She might be cross, but
perhaps she had judged correctly.

“Run away, Roy,” the Colonel said.
“We did not send for you, and we are
busy.”

“Please, sir, may I say something
first?” Roy advanced unfalteringly,
and stood in front of the Colonel.

“Well, be quick, my boy. You are
interrupting us.”

Roy’s honest grey eyes met his
father’s. “I was out there,” he said,
pointing to the verandah. “And I
heard something. I didn’t think about
its being a secret, and I listened. I
heard about going to Paris, and I—I
went and told Molly. And she said it
was mean of me. And I—couldn’t be
mean, sir!”

“No, Roy, you couldn’t,” the Colonel
answered with gravity, while delighted
at the boy’s openness.

“I didn’t mean any harm; but I suppose
I oughtn’t to have listened. I
won’t ever again, sir.”

“Well, yes; of course that was wrong,”
the Colonel said, with a careful choice
of words. “You should have told us
that you were there. And you must not
look upon the plan as—ahem—as quite
settled. We are merely discussing it;
and we might change our intentions——”

“I am sure, my dear sir, I heartily
wish you would,” chimed in Mrs.
Bryce.

The Colonel made her a stately bow.

“And if I had found you out, Roy,
overhearing us, I should certainly have
blamed you. But as you have voluntarily
confessed it, I”—the Colonel
hesitated, conscious of his wife’s pleading
gaze—”well, we need say no more
about the matter. You have acted
rightly in coming at once to me; and
I am convinced that you will not do
such a thing again. Now you may run
away.”

Roy bounded off in the best of spirits,
and Mrs. Bryce remarked, “There is
an opportunity to give up your scheme.
Best possible punishment for the boy.
Were he my boy he should suffer for
his behaviour.”

“But Roy is my son,” the Colonel
said, and there was an accent of pride
in his voice.

The pretty girl, with tall feathers in
her bonnet, glided softly out of the
room after Roy. She did not follow
him far. She saw him vanish in the
direction of the garden, flourishing his
heels like a young colt, and she went
the other way, towards the school-room.
For Roy had told Molly about the Paris
plan, and Polly guessed what that would
mean to Molly.

Mary Keene and her brother John,
commonly known as “Polly” and
“Jack,” were not really cousins to Roy
and Molly, though treated as such by
the family. Their widowed grandmother,
Mrs. Keene, had, some fourteen
years earlier, married a second
time—rather late in life—and her
new husband, Mr. Fairbank, had one
daughter, Harriette, then just married
to Captain Baron. Two or three years
later her own grandchildren, Jack and
Polly, were left orphans, and were
taken in permanently by Mr. and Mrs.
Fairbank. When Mr. Fairbank died,
some four or five years before this
date, his twice-widowed wife took up
her abode, with her grandchildren, in
Bath, then a fashionable place of residence
for “the quality.” Jack, who
was a year and more older than Polly
had, at the beginning of this story, just
been gazetted to a regiment of the line,
which was quartered in Bath.

Molly was very fond of Polly, and she
had also a warm admiration for Jack;
but no one in the world could be to her
like her own twin-brother, Roy; and
Roy’s indifference to this first serious
separation had cut her to the quick.
When Polly entered the schoolroom, she
at first thought that Molly had fled;
but she detected a little heap in the
farthest and darkest corner, and soon
she heard the sound of a smothered sob,
followed quickly by a second and a
third.

Polly waited a moment, to draw off
her gloves, and then she made her way
to the corner, sat down on the ground,
and put a pair of gentle arms round the
child.

“O fie, little Molly, fie! This won’t
do at all, you know. Crying to have to
go home with me! That is altogether
wrong and silly. And so unkind too.
It makes me feel half inclined to cry
also, because I wanted to have dear little
Molly, and now I know that Molly does
not care to come. Molly, you dear
little goose, don’t you know that people
can’t be always and for ever together
the whole of their lives? It isn’t the
way of the world, dear; and you and I
can’t alter the world to please ourselves.
Roy is glad to go to Paris, of course;
and so would you be, and so should I{23}
be, in his place. But everybody can’t
go to Paris at the same time. Fie, fie,
little Molly, to mind so much what isn’t
worth making your eyes red about!
Fie, dear! Wake up, and don’t be
doleful. Always laugh, if you can; because
if you are unhappy, it makes other
people unhappy as well. And that is
such a pity. You don’t wish to set me
off crying too, do you?”

The elder girl’s eyes had a suspicious
look in them of tears not far off, as she
bent over the child.

“Other people have troubles, as well
as you, little Moll. Try to believe that,
and try to be brave. We don’t all—I
mean, they don’t all talk about their
troubles always. It is of no use. Things
have to be borne, and crying does no
good. So stop the tears, Molly, and
hold up your head, and think how nice
it will be to see my grandmother and
Jack, and the Bath Pump-room, and all
the fine ladies and gentlemen walking
about in their smart clothes.”

A squeeze of Molly’s arms came in
reply.

“There will be Admiral and Mrs.
Peirce to see, for the Admiral is now at
home, and they are in Bath—and little
Will Peirce, who soon is to be a middy
in His Majesty’s Navy. And Jack shall
show himself to you in his new scarlet
coat. You would not think how well he
looks in it. I am proud of him, and so
must you be; for Jack is everything in
the world to me. No, not quite everything,
but a great deal, as Roy is to
you. Yet, I do not expect always to
keep Jack by my side. He will have to
go some day, and he will have to fight
for old England. And when that day
comes, I shall bid him farewell with
a smile; for I would not be a drag upon
him, nor wish to hold him back. And
Roy will go also; and you will bear it
bravely, little Moll. I am sure you will—like
a soldier’s daughter.”

The soft caressing voice, the cool
rose-leaf cheek against her own, the
lovely dark eyes smiling upon her, all
comforted poor Molly’s sore heart; and
she clung to Polly, and cried away more
than half her pain.

“Don’t tell Roy,” she petitioned
presently. “He doesn’t mind, and he
must not think that I do.”

“Why not? That is naughty pride,
Molly. It is always the women who
care, not the men.” Polly held up her
head, and a far-away look crept into
the soft eyes. “Dear, you must expect
it to be so. Men have so much to do
and to think about. But we have time
to grieve, when they go away to fight;
and they are always so glad to go.”

“Are they?” a deep and quiet voice
asked, close to her side, and Polly
started strangely. For a moment her
tiny shell-pink ears became crimson, and
then she looked up, smiling.

“How do you do, Captain Ivor?”

Denham Ivor in his uniform—large-skirted
military coat, black gaiters,
white breeches, pig-tail, and gold-laced
cocked hat in hand—looked even taller
than out of it, and at all times he was
wont to overtop the average man. He
had a fine face, well browned, with
regular features and dark eyes, ordinarily
calm, and he bore his head in a
stately fashion, while his manners were
marked by a grave courtesy, which
might seem strange beside modern freedom.
As he looked down upon Polly, a
subdued glow awoke in those earnest
eyes.

Polly had not sprung up. She was
still kneeling on the floor beside Molly,
and her slim figure in its white frock
looked very child-like. The flush had
died as fast as it had arisen. Molly was
clinging to her, with hidden face, and
for an instant the fresh voice failed to
reach the younger girl’s understanding.
Then Molly became aware of another
spectator, and quitting her hold, she
fled from the room. Polly rose gracefully.

“We will now go to the drawing-room,”
she suggested.

“Nay, wait a moment, I entreat. One
instant”—and the bronzed face had
grown positively pale. “I beseech of
you to listen to me. For indeed, I
have somewhat to say which I can no
longer resolve to keep to myself. No,
not even for one more day. Somewhat
that you alone can answer, thereby
making me the most happy or the most
miserable of men.”

A tiny gleam came to Polly’s downcast
eyes.

“If you have aught that is weighty to
say, it may be that I could but refer you
to my grandmother,” she suggested
demurely.

“But perhaps you can divine what
that weighty thing is. And what if
already I have written to your grandmother;
and if she has consented to my
suit?”

Young ladies did not give themselves
away too cheaply in those days. Polly
was barely eighteen; but, for all that,
she had a very dainty air of dignity.
And if, during past weeks, she had gone
through some troublous hours, recognising
how much she cared for Captain
Ivor, and wondering, despite his marked
attentions, whether he seriously cared
for her, she was not going to admit as
much in any haste to the individual in
question. So she dropped an elegant
little curtsey, and asked, with the most
innocent air imaginable—

“Then, pray, sir, what may be your
will?”

“Sweet Polly, may I speak?”

A solid square stool—well adapted for
present purposes—was close at hand,
and promptly down upon this with both
knees went the tall grenadier, in the
most approved fashion of his day. Sweet
Polly could not long stand out against
his earnest pleading. So, with a show
of coy reserve, she gradually yielded,
intimating that she did like him just
a little; that some day or other she
thought she could be his wife; that
meantime she would somehow manage
to keep him in her memory.

“And next week you are away to
Paris!” she said, perhaps secretly
wondering why he did not prefer to
spend his leave in Bath. “For a whole
long fortnight!”

“I could wish that I were not going.
But all is arranged and the Colonel
desires it. I must not fail him now at
the last. If I can see my way to return
at the end of a se’night, I will assuredly
do so. If not—I shall still have a fortnight
after my return. I shall know
what to do with that time, sweetheart.”

It is to be feared that Polly found
small leisure thereafter for meditating
on the childish woes of little Molly, so
full was her head of the brave young
Grenadier Captain, who had vowed to
devote his life to her.

Just one or two weeks of separation,
and then she would have him with her
again; and hers would be the ineffable
delight of showing off this gallant lover
among all her Bath friends. How they
would one and all envy Polly!

A small touch of feminine vanity no
doubt crept in here, though Polly’s
whole girlish heart was given to Denham.
But in his deeper love for her
there was no thought of what others
might say. He would, of course, be
proud of the fair creature whom he had
won; yet in his love there was no room
found for the puerile element. It pervaded
the man’s entire being.

He stood very much alone in the
world as regarded kinship, having been
left an orphan at an early age, under
the guardianship of Colonel Baron, his
father’s cousin, and having no brothers,
sisters or other near relatives. The
Barons’ house had been, ever since
Colonel Baron’s marriage, a home to
him; and while Colonel Baron was in
some sense almost as his father, Mrs.
Baron occupied rather the position of an
elder sister. To Roy and Molly, Denham
had always been like a brother. He
had seen a good deal of both Polly and
Jack in their childhood, but during later
years he had been much on service
abroad; and his first view of Polly
Keene, his quondam playmate, transformed
into a grown-up young lady, had
been but a few weeks before this date.
Denham had lost his heart to her in the
first half-hour of their renewed acquaintance;
and Polly soon discovered that
he was the one man in the world who
had her happiness in his keeping.

Despite the warm affection of his
Baron cousins, Denham had possessed
hitherto none as absolutely his own.
Now that he had won “Sweet Polly,”
life would wear for him a new aspect.

And when, three or four days later,
good-byes were said, no voice whispered
to him or to Polly, how long-drawn-out
a separation lay ahead.

(To be continued.)

MARY’S PART.

By WILLIAM T. SAWARD.

CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.

By MARGARET INNES.

CHAPTER I.

It has been suggested that the experiences of
some English people in search of and on
a ranch in California might be of interest
to others, especially, perhaps, to those who
are looking about more or less anxiously
to find some promising opening for the
future of their boys, and who, seeing the
Old World so crowded, and realising the
difficulty of finding a possible niche at home,
may desire to try an altogether new life in the
New World.

Many fathers and mothers, also like ourselves,
would fain discover, if possible, some
way of keeping their boys beside them; some
business which they can work together, and
in which they may find a satisfactory livelihood
for all. Of course, I am speaking of those
who have no well-established family business
or firm; for them many difficulties and
anxious questions are solved.

These were the reasons, together with the
delicate health of our two boys, and my own
long-standing lung trouble, which, after much
thought and study, led us to pack up all our
worldly goods, label them “Settlers’ effects,”
and start off on the weary long journey of
6,000 miles, to the land of sunshine, on the
Pacific coast. Having some acquaintances
living at a little summer holiday place on the
coast, and within some seventeen miles of the
busy and enterprising town of Los Angeles,
we decided to go there, and, if convenient,
make it our headquarters while looking about
and getting all possible information on the
important subject of ranching.

We arrived about the end of October, when
the heat of summer was over; for even on the
coast, the glare of full summer is trying to
people coming from northern latitudes.

But we found the climate most exquisite all
the winter. The sunshine was perfectly
glorious; the colours, the distances and the
sunsets were like fairyland. Indeed, they
were quite an excitement to us, and we would
often come to a sudden standstill in our
evening walks to watch the splendid transformation
scene, saying how exaggerated
everyone would think our descriptions, if we
tried to put them all down exactly, on paper.
It is true Holman Hunt had such colours in
his pictures of Palestine, but it needs a genius
to make such impossible colours accepted as
realities.

The little town is built near the edge of the
bluffs, and it was delightful to sit under the
eucalyptus trees and look out at the sea, so
wonderfully blue, with its broad white fringe
all round the bay, where the big rollers broke
on the yellow sands, and rushed away up the
level shore.

The happiness too of all the living creatures
seemed quite infectious. We saw flocks of
dainty wee sea-ducks, tumbling and swimming
about in the sea, just where the huge rollers
broke, vying with each other in the show of
bravery, going under with the huge crest of a
wave and bobbing up again, so rapidly, and
with a jaunty toss of the head. Enormous
golden brown butterflies came floating down
the soft air and hung over the white surf.

Schools of porpoises made the most demonstrative
show of enjoyment, jumping high out
of the sea and careering round, in a rushing
mass, that would churn up the water as they
went into a perfect whirlpool. Here and there,
in the quiet evening, the head of a friendly
seal would appear silently, and then go under
without a ripple.

Stately, solemn-looking pelicans, too, flew
past constantly, always in single file, as
though they were going to some grave and
important function. There were crowds of
blue birds, looking like jewels in the bright
sunshine; and the humming-birds made quite
a noise with their wee wings round our honeysuckle-covered
verandah.

Every living thing seemed to have just
discovered how gay and charming a thing life
was.

All this helped to give us a very favourable
impression of the new land, and to heal a
little the painful home-sickness and longing
that beset us almost at once, when we realised
more and more the strangeness of much
around us.

Finding, on arriving there, that this little
town would suit us for some months, we
“rented” a pretty little house of seven or
eight rooms, with a good verandah, shaded
with honeysuckle, and a small garden, for
which we paid thirty dollars a month.

Many of the ranchers from the inland
valleys come there for three or four of the{26}
summer months, as the heat is then almost
unendurable anywhere out of reach of the sea
breeze. We had been advised to bring a
servant with us from England; for help of
every kind is very expensive, all over the
States, and especially in California. The
usual wages are twenty-five dollars a month
for women servants, and thirty to forty dollars
for a Chinaman.

Unfortunately we were not able to bring a
well tried and trusted servant, but had to
content ourselves with choosing the best we
could from a large number who, tempted by
the high wages, came to be interviewed, in
answer to our advertisement; but only very
few of the applicants were at all suitable.

The usual plan as to the fare—which is of
course expensive—is to make a clear and
binding arrangement with the girl engaged;
that it shall come out of her first six months’
wage, also that she shall give a promise to
stay at least two years, and that after this
period she shall receive the full California
wage, having, meanwhile, been paid somewhat
less. These arrangements were all made,
most clearly in our case, and were at once
forgotten by our carefully chosen maid. She
was an absolute failure, so far as we were
concerned, and as few people out here ask
any character when engaging a servant, it was
quite easy for her to get another place at once
at the usual high wages and simply march off
and leave us; which she did.

Our house agent, a kindly Englishman,
who had been many years in California, told
us that even if we desired to go to law about
it, the case would most certainly be given
against us. The jury would be composed of
men, all more or less of the same class as our
servant, and their sympathies would be with
her, and we should not have the least chance
of getting justice.

It was rather comforting, at the time, to
find how many others among our acquaintances
had gone through the same experience!

Before this catastrophe came about, however,
we had been exceedingly busy visiting
innumerable ranches and examining possible
and impossible land that was waiting to be
made into ranches. We saw most of the
well-known “settled-up” parts, and many
lovely valleys and foothills which were said
to be the coming fruit districts of the near
future.

It takes some years for English eyes to get
accustomed to the bareness of the hills of
California, or to find out the true beauty of
these dried-up looking slopes. Once the love
for them begins, however, it grows at a great
pace, and one discovers constantly fresh
wonder and charm in them. Surely no other
hills have the gift of holding the splendid
sunset colours with such transfiguring power.
Even the Alps cannot outrival them in this.
But at first it is their uncompromising bareness,
dryness and barrenness which hurts
one’s sensitiveness. We were also disagreeably
impressed by the tracts of waste ground,
lying promiscuously among the more finished
streets, and all scattered over with empty tins
and other rubbish, giving a decided effect of
disorder and unkemptness, even though the
neighbouring houses might be pretty and
have dainty gardens. Some of the older
established fruit districts were very prosperous
looking, and had quite a busy social life. But
our minds were quite made up, that of what
the land had to offer, we would, without
hesitation, choose a real country life, free and
untrammelled, in one of the less settled
neighbourhoods.

However we conscientiously went to see
all the most promising parts, and in this way
we learnt a great deal. We found that in this
part of Southern California the heat during
the summer months was so very great, that all
who had the means to do so, left these inland
valleys and came every summer to the coast
for three or four months, leaving a reliable
man in charge, and also going back and
forward several times to see that everything
was being well cared for. To many people
this would be no drawback, but only a
pleasant change. We did not wish, however,
to settle in any place where we should be
absolutely compelled to leave home for so
long every year.

Another disadvantage of buying a ranch in
one of these established parts is the very high
price demanded for all such land. However,
it is an open question whether it really costs
more in the end to buy a ready-planted and
bearing ranch at the very high figure generally
quoted.

If you buy in a less settled neighbourhood
the rough untouched land at a tenth of the
price—which would be about the cost of good
land with water—there is the hard work of
clearing and grading, laying out, planting and
piping it. Then the long waiting before the
trees can bring in any income, and when household
and ranch expenses have to be met,
must be counted as so much more money
invested. It is just here that so many sad
failures occur.

There has been so much exaggeration about
the wonders of California, that those who
have caught from such one-sided accounts the
fever of longing for the sunshine and free life,
do not make allowance for this necessarily
long pause before any income is possible from
a ranch. Thus it comes to pass that so many
ranches are mortgaged; and when a ranch is
mortgaged, it is a hopeless business for the
poor rancher who has worked so hard at his
unaccustomed labour.

It has been said that small fruit—berries of
different kinds—may be grown meanwhile,
and that the profits from these will help out
the expenses until the ranch trees bear. If
you are made of cast iron, you may possibly
be able to give the necessary work to your
ranch, and at the same time cultivate small
fruit; but if you come from the ordinary
comfortable middle-class at home, you cannot
have the strength or resistance to stand this
additional toil.

I believe there is a vague but sanguine idea
among those at home, bitten by the Californian
fever, that you have only to plant
trees or vegetables and then sit down comfortably
in the sunshine and wait for them to
grow, condescending eventually to put aside
your book and your pipe for a little while,
and gather in all the rich harvest which this
wonderful climate has produced for you.
This is not so. Ranching is really hard
work, and moreover the greatest strain of the
life to men coming from a different climate,
is that all this unaccustomed labour has to
be done in the hot glare of unbroken sunshine.

(To be continued.)

VARIETIES.

It Strikes one as Remarkable.

A train starts daily, let us say, from San
Francisco to New York, and one daily from
New York to San Francisco, the journey
lasting seven days. How many trains will a
traveller meet in journeying from San Francisco
to New York?

It appears obvious at the first glance that
the traveller must meet seven trains—and that
is the answer which will be given by nine girls
out of ten to whom the question is new.

The fact is overlooked that every day during
the journey a fresh train is starting from the
other end, whilst there are seven on the way
to begin with. The traveller will, therefore,
meet not seven trains but fourteen.

The Two Sacks.

Imitated from Phædrus.

In Debt for Ever.

A man who owes a shilling, proceeds to pay
it at the rate of sixpence the first day, threepence
the second day, three half-pence the
next, three farthings the next, and so on—paying
each day half the amount he paid the
day before.

Supposing him to be furnished with counters
of small value, so as to be able readily to pay
fractions of a penny, how long would it take
him to pay the shilling?

The answer is that he would never pay it.
It is true that he would pay elevenpence-farthing
in four days, but after that his progress
would be slow and he could never get out of
debt.

Good Verses by a Bad Poet.

Few things in Dryden or Pope, it has been
remarked, are finer than the following lines by
a man whom they both continually laughed at—Sir
Richard Blackmore—

Love of Country.

Churchill.

The Passing Cloud.

Cloud and storm only intimate the passing
commotion needful to purify the air and the
water; and compared with the azure depths
above and below, they are superficial and
transitory. They retire, and the beautiful
blue of heaven reappears, and the ocean
again becomes a sapphire foundation on which
the sun scatters his jewels of light with regal
lavishness.

And so no dark trial, no grievous judgment,
can cross our sky without revealing some spot
of heavenly blue in the midst of it, or if
concealed for a moment, breaking forth again
with greater brightness and beauty.

Rev. Dr. Hugh Macmillan.

{27}

CHINA MARKS.

ENGLISH PORCELAIN.

PART I.

The name porcelain is derived from the
Italian porcellana, signifying a cowrie shell,
on account of the delicate translucent glaze
on its surface. At how early a date the
manufacture of pottery began in this country,
before the Roman invasion, is not absolutely
known. In the Anglo-Saxon times the
pottery of the Celtic tribes was confined to
the manufacture of cinerary urns and very
common utensils of household use; as they
preferred the employment of glass and horn
for drinking purposes, and metal or wood for
solid food. In the thirteenth century pottery
was reinstated in public favour; and a great
advance was made in the art, a glaze being
employed from the fourteenth to the beginning
of the sixteenth century, when a new description
of pottery was invented, a salt-glazed stoneware,
which came into the market with importations
of Italian fayence and oriental porcelain.

It was not until the good Père d’Entrecolles
introduced into this country the learning of
that ancient Empire of China, in the mysteries
of the ceramic art, that our own ideas became
enlarged and elevated above the improvements
made in our potteries. The Père, being a
resident in a district distinguished for its
porcelain manufactories, sent samples to his
own country (A.D. 1727, 1729,) with information
as to the substances employed at King-te-Chin,
for which kilns affording greater
heat and suitable for firing the differently-coloured
enamels were employed.

Hard paste was made at Plymouth, Bristol
and Lowestoft, and the soft paste at Chelsea,
Bow, Derby, Nantgarw, Liverpool, Pinxton,
Swansea, Rockingham, Worcester, Shropshire
and Staffordshire; felspar being superadded
in the latter two manufactories. The soft
paste is produced from an alkaline flux, combining
chalk, bone-ash, sand or gypsum.

Stratford-le-Bow.

At Stratford-le-Bow (called “New Canton”)
soft-paste china was produced in the old
pottery works, believed to have been established
in 1730, though little is known of them
till 1744, when Edward Heylin and Thomas
Frye, a painter, took out the first patent, and
a second in 1749. The marks attributed to
these works are as here illustrated.

The glaze on the Bow ware was very
brilliant, but sometimes erred in point of
thickness. The blue china was generally
decorated with birds, flowers, figures and
Chinese landscapes. A pattern of hawthorn
was a favourite, consisting of two sprigs
united. The bow and arrow mark is usually
found on small objects, and the dagger and
anchor, with a crescent at times, appears on
figures. A small blue crescent, with the
horns turned up, have also been used. The
monogram of Thomas Frye, sometimes reversed,
identified some figures from the Bow
works at a date previous to 1760. Many
variations of Frye’s signature have been used
by the workmen of this factory; too many for
the space at disposal in these columns. It
was carried on for many years by Messrs.
Crowther and Weatherby, who employed
some ninety painters, of whom one was
Thomas Craft. The Bow paste is very hard
and compact, and therefore heavy. But the
most delicate ware was also produced; as in
cups and saucers, which were like egg-shells
in thinness, and of a milky whiteness.

Under Thomas Frye the china was brought
to great perfection. It was after him we
find that the works passed into the hands of
Weatherby and Crowther, and were closed by
the bankruptcy of the latter in 1763, Weatherby
having died the previous year.

I may observe that sprigged tea-sets, Dresden
sprigs and white bud sprigs—all very popular
patterns—were largely produced at Bow, in
addition to landscapes and dragon services;
also statuettes and groups of figures, vases, etc.

Chelsea Porcelain Works.

The Chelsea manufacture of china is said to
date from Cenvirons, 1745-49, but a species of
porcelain was produced in a glass factory at
Chelsea in 1676, established there by some
Venetians, patronised by the then Duke of
Buckingham. Clay from Dorsetshire, sand
from the Isle of Wight and kaolin, and
chinastone from Cornwall and Devonshire,
were employed at this factory. An anchor
sometimes barbed, and at other times with
amulets, and one within a double circle; as
also a triangle, with the name “Chelsea,”
and the date “1745” beneath it, were the
marks chosen to distinguish this ware. On
the finest specimens the anchor is gilt, on
those of second quality in red, brown or
purple upon the glaze.

The porcelain of Chelsea bears some resemblance
to that of Venice of about the same
date—the Cozzi period, 1780—which is
natural, the founders of the manufactory
having been Venetians; and the porcelain
produced there stands amongst the very first
of our English ceramic works in every respect,
ranking higher than that of Bristol. The
workmen were originally procured from Bow,
Burslem and other works; the china manufacture
being carried on at first by William
the Duke of Cumberland and Sir Everard
Faulkenor, the latter dying in 1755 or 1758,
and the former in 1765, when Sprimont
became sole proprietor. Three blemishes, or
spots, characterise the china of this factory,
appearing at equal distances where the glaze
has been removed, apparently by contact with
what the article rested upon.

The work executed at the Chelsea factory
ranked in the highest place that was ever
attained at others in this country. It was
greatly admired by Wedgwood, and was
scarcely inferior to the best at Sèvres. The
whole contents of the manufactory were sold
by auction by M. Sprimont on his retirement;
Mr. Duesbury purchasing the house, etc., and
the remainder of the stock was sold by Christie
and Ansell in 1779.

One of the earliest of the Chelsea marks is
here given showing the date; and two anchors
side by side and one inverted, in gold, is only
found on the finest examples.

The early productions of Chelsea were of
soft paste, and the glaze was thick and creamy,
much of the white ground being left without
decoration. The pieces with the bleu de
Vincennes, the peacock green and turquoise
blue, copied from the Sèvres ceramists, were
of later date. Those of claret-colour are very
rare. All these self-coloured examples are
highly gilt.

(To be continued.)

{28}

RINGS LOST AND FOUND.

By DORA DE BLAQUIÈRE.

Nothing is more curious
and interesting in the
changes and chances
of the world than
the stories of things
“lost and found.”
One constantly hears
of such on the best
authority, being told
by people in whom
one has the most
perfect confidence, and who have no reason
to deceive us. Nearly everyone has tales
of this kind to tell you when once they
understand your interest in the subject, and
generally they are about some article of
jewelry, and nearly always of finger-rings.
I have a large number of notes taken down
from people’s own lips, some of which would
be too strange to be believed if you did not
know the character of the narrator. Tales of
what we call coincidences, of dreams, of
apparitions, all connected with the recovery of
certain articles, appear in the collection, but
in the following papers I shall try to avoid
taxing your powers of belief too severely, for
though I may believe what has been related to
me, you, not having had my experiences and
knowledge of my sources of information, would
probably refuse to credit them.

One of the most remarkable tales of rings
lost and found is that told of the discovery, in
June, 1820, of the signet-ring of Mary, Queen
of Scots, in the ruins of the Castle of Fotheringay.
The finder was a workman named
Robert Wyatt, formerly a private in the
Prince of Wales’s 3rd Foot. In latter years he
gained his living as a guide to the ruins of the
castle, and often related to visitors how he
assisted in the digging-up of the drawbridge
and the filling-up of the moat; and that a
Scottish gentleman had measured out the
banqueting-hall, where the Queen was executed,
and found it correct, and finally, how the ring
was found by himself. It is supposed to have
been swept away with the blood-stained sawdust,
and to have fallen from her finger during the
last agonies of her violent death. Wyatt died
in September, 1862, at the good age of 83.
It has an inscription, i.e., “Henri L. Darnley,
1565,” the monogram of H and M bound
up in a true lovers’ knot, and within the
hoop the lion of Scotland on a crowned
shield.

This ring was exhibited at the Stuart Exhibition
in 1889 (No. 337 in the catalogue),
but the description is not quite accurate. It
was in the collection of Mr. Waterlow, of
Walton Hall, Yorkshire, and a full account is
given in the Archæological Journal, vol. xv.,
p. 253, and also in Archæologia, vol. xxxiii.,
p. 355. No doubt seems to be entertained
that it was Mary’s nuptial ring, as well as the
betrothal one, the date “1565” being that of
their engagement, and they were married the
following year.

Mary’s rings, indeed, seem to have been
addicted to being lost, for I saw at the Peterborough
Exhibition, in 1887, a ring lent by
Lord Wantage, found in the garden of Sywell
Hall, which is believed to have been given by
her to one of her attendants there. It has the
motto “Tre loyalement ma souvreyn” engraved
inside, and is of fine gold. A thumb signet-ring
was found at Borthwick Castle, with her
cipher on it, “M.R.,” and is believed to have
been lost during her stay at the castle, to which
she fled with Bothwell, 1567. This was at the
same exhibition.

Though called a signet-ring, it is well to say
here that a signet-ring used by her is now in
the British Museum, which was formerly the
property of Queen Charlotte, and subsequently
belonged to the Duke of York. The betrothal
ring, however, is not a signet, though it might
have been used for sealing.

Another interesting case of a ring lost and
found is that of Dean Bargrave’s signet, who
was Dean of Canterbury in the days of Cromwell.
This ring was probably either lost or
hidden in the deanery garden when the dean
was seized by Cromwell’s Roundheads, and
dragged to the Fleet Prison. It was found a
few years ago, and was recognised by its
appearance in the portrait of the dean, who
has it on his finger. The portrait now hangs
in the dean’s study at Canterbury.

In nearly all the cases I am about to relate,
I have the names and addresses of the
narrators, and all of them are apparently true,
and quite to be relied upon. The first one
was told me by the daughter of an old lady,
who was the daughter of a clergyman
in Essex, and nearly related to one of the
Archbishops of Canterbury. She was walking
in the garden of the rectory one day, not long
before her marriage, when in some way a ring
she was wearing slipped from her finger, and
no searching availed to recover it. Apparently
it was lost for ever. The path was an ordinary
gravelled garden walk, and there seemed no
place where even so small an object could have
found a sheltering to conceal it. The next
year, after her marriage, she was paying a visit
to her father at the rectory, and was walking
down the same path in the garden, when she
saw the lost ring lying on the ground in front
of her. From the same authority I heard two
other stories, the first of a ring lost in a hay-field
while the hay-making was going on.
After an interval had elapsed of a year and a
half, one morning the coachman came in with
the lost ring in his hand. He said he had
been cutting out hay from the stack, and had
felt something hard against the edge of his
cleaver, and on putting in his hand, he had
immediately discovered the ring. The second
story was not of a ring, however, but of
a very valuable scarf-pin, lost by a great fox-hunter
while riding through a gap in a hedge.
The next year the same ground was gone
over, and the same gap revisited, which reminded
the owner of his lost pin. He dismounted
from his horse, and after a short
search, found his pin, which was sticking
upright in the ground near the hedge.

Many of these modern stories of lost and
found sound like repetitions of old ones—”chestnuts,”
in fact. But they are not; and
in this matter, as well as in others of a
different kind, history appears to repeat itself.
The Canadian story which follows is one of
these, but it is quite a new one. It was told
me by a friend, and confirmed by her husband,
and by the original letter containing the
account of the dream, which came from far-off
Assiniboinia.

The tale begins with a family who dwelt on
a farm by the lake of J—— in Ontario; but
finding that the rocky land on its shores was
not conducive to successful farming, they
moved up to the Great North-West and took
up fresh land in Assiniboinia. The family
consisted of the father and mother, their son
and his wife, and several children, and my
tale relates to the son’s wife only, who had
lost, some years before her departure, in the
garden of the old home, her wedding-ring.
To a woman it will not be at all wonderful
to hear that this loss was a subject of great
concern, and also somewhat superstitious fear;
for by many people such a loss is thought to
be an omen of ill-luck. Some of the family
still remained on the lake of J——, a married
daughter, the sister-in-law of the loser of the
ring. One morning, about two years after
the departure of her family, she had a
letter from her brother’s wife, to beg her to go
across the lake to the old homestead, for she
had had a very vivid dream about the lost
ring; and in this dream she had seen it, lying
at the root of a white flower, a phlox, she
thought, which grew on the right side of the
front door, close to the wall of the house and
the door-step.

A few days after the receipt of this letter,
Mrs. B—— and her husband rowed across the
lake and visited the old farm. It had never
been let, and a buyer in those regions is hard
to find; so the garden paths were overgrown,
and the house neglected and forlorn; but
growing by the front door-step there was a
white phlox in full bloom, and taking the spade
they had brought with them, they dug it up,
and at its roots they found the lost wedding-ring.

I also gleaned another story in Canada of
the same kind. A worthy alderman of a
small town in Ontario was digging potatoes
in his garden one summer morning, in the
year 1894. His wife had several times summoned
him to breakfast, but on her last
summons he declared he could not come until
he had dug up one more hill. When he
finally came in to breakfast he brought with
him a ring which she had lost in the garden
seven years before, and which he had unearthed
in that last potato hill.

A story which I thought very remarkable
was told me the other day, and happened, I
believe, at Hastings. A maidservant in the
family of a resident found a brooch in the
street, and as it was both pretty and rather
valuable, an advertisement was put into a
local paper by the finder, who wished to discover
the owner, but without success. Two
years elapsed, and the girl and her mistress
both agreed that there was no hope of an
owner turning up, and so she wore it. The
very first day she put it on she went out, and
walking down one of the main roads into
Hastings, she met a lady who, looking at her
closely, said, coming up to her, “I think you
are wearing my brooch.” The wonderful part
of this story is that the lady was only a
visitor, and had not been in Hastings since
the day she had lost her brooch, two years
before.

A writer in the Globe, a short time ago,
gave a very remarkable account of a coincidence
which is said to have been quite
authenticated. A lady finding that the
setting of a valuable ring had become insecure,
entrusted it to a lad in her service to take it
to the jewellers to be repaired. She lived on
her estate at a short distance from the
neighbouring town, and on his way the
messenger had to cross a wooden bridge over
a stream in the park. This, of course, presented
the usual attraction. The boy lingered,
and bethinking him of his charge, took the
ring from the case for a closer inspection.
But ill-luck followed him, for the ring suddenly
slipped from his hold, and falling on a
muddy bank, disappeared from view. The
lad searched in vain; and being apprehensive
that he might be charged with its theft,
absconded from his situation and went to sea.
Being a quick and handy boy, he grew into
an energetic and enterprising man; settled in
a colony, and in the course of time realised
a large fortune. Returning to England, he
found the estate on which he had formerly{29}
served was in the market, whereupon he
bought it and took up his residence in the
Manor House.

Walking through his grounds one day with
a friend, they came to the scene of the lost
ring, and he related the story which had
indirectly led to his present position. “And
that is the very spot where it dropped,”
said he, thrusting his stick into the bank.
The lost ring was found upon the stick when
it was withdrawn. It had actually impaled
the lost jewel, which was its own startling
verification of the story. The strange part of
this tale is that the loser should have been the
finder, for there is nothing marvellous in the
misadventure until we come to the finding of
the ring.

One of the interesting things shown at the
Stuart Exhibition was the keys of Lochleaven
Castle. I am sure my readers will all remember
the romantic story of Queen Mary’s escape
from thence in 1568, with the help of young
Douglas, who locked the gates to prevent
pursuit, and then threw the keys into the
lake, where they lay until discovered in 1805.

Many people have looked at the dredging
and cleansing of the Tiber, which has been
going on for the last few years, with much
interest, in the hope that, during the course of
these labours, many precious objects would be
discovered, and amongst others, the spoils of
the Temple at Jerusalem, which were brought
by Titus to grace his triumph, and which may
be seen depicted on the inside of the arch
erected to commemorate his victories.
Amongst these were the seven-branched
candlesticks and the table of the shewbread.
These, with other treasures, are said to have
been thrown into the Tiber.

JAP DOLL SCENT SACHETS.

One of these little ladies travelled safely all
the way from Ohio, United States, wrapped up
in a newspaper; her sister came only from the
other side of London, and arrived with a
smashed head. Two kind friends, knowing I
am always on the look-out for some novelty for
“Our Girls,” were seized simultaneously with
the desire, which they carried into effect, to
send me an “idea” by way of a birthday
present, and here is the result.

The wee “Jap” dolls may be bought for a
penny each at many fancy shops. For Fig. 1,
three-quarters of a yard of satin or any good
ribbon three inches wide, and one yard of a
contrasting colour an inch wide, is required.
Double the piece of wide ribbon and fringe
both ends for an
inch and a half,
oversew one side,
insert a thick
layer of wadding
to within two
inches of the top,
plentifully besprinkled
with
sweet sachet-powder—obtainable
at any
chemist’s—oversew
the otherside
and along the
bottom above
the fringe, cut a
hole at the top
sufficiently large
to insert the doll’s body—poor thing, she
requires no legs—fix it firmly at shoulders and
waist, take the narrow ribbon and drape it
gracefully round according to the drawing,
leaving a loop for hanging purposes. Fig. 2
requires but half a yard of wide ribbon, two
yards of quarter-inch ditto, and half a yard
of one inch wide. Two little sleeves are made
of the wide ribbon folded lengthwise and
fringed at one end; the remainder is folded,
filled, and sewn up. In this case only the
doll’s head is retained; there are no arms
within those sleeves as in Fig. 1. A “toby”
frill is made with the half yard of inch-wide
ribbon, and the narrow is arranged artistically
according to Fig. 2.

It is quite possible, of course, to make these
sachets with any odds and ends of silk without
buying special pieces of any particular width.
The little dolls and some sachet-powder are
the only absolute necessaries, and, if good
colourings are chosen, an array of them look
most tempting and fascinating on a bazaar
stall. They should not be sold for less than
sixpence, and in some places might fetch a
shilling.

“Cousin Lil.”

{30}

LETTERS FROM A LAWYER.

PART I.

The Temple.

My dear Dorothy.—You do not often
favour me with your correspondence, so that I
was particularly pleased and flattered by the
receipt of your letter asking for my opinion,
as a rising barrister, on the following important
legal points, which I will now proceed to
deal with. As you have approached me
without the intervention of a solicitor, it may
possibly gratify you to know that I am not
entitled to make any charge (even were I disposed
to do so) for my professional opinions.
This statement will, I am sure, remove a
great weight from your mind; but a truce to
jesting, now to business.

In your first question you ask me to decide
whether you or Mr. Anstruther were right on
the question of paying excess fares on your
return from the Crystal Palace the other
evening.

So far as the arguments adduced on either
side are concerned, I can tell you frankly
that you were both wrong; but let me have the
facts of the case clearly stated before me. It
appears that Aunt Anne, Robert and yourself
went down last Wednesday to the Crystal
Palace, where you met Miss Anstruther and
her brother; and I have no doubt enjoyed
yourselves immensely, wandering through those
lovely grounds, gazing at the antediluvian
monsters on the lakes or listening to the
bands in the rosary or on the terrace.

In my opinion the Crystal Palace is just
the place to spend a happy day. This, however,
is a digression.

Instead of dining at the Palace, Aunt Anne
invited the Anstruthers to return to town with
you and to take their chance of getting—what
I from personal experience can vouch for as
certain to have been—an excellent impromptu
meal.

On the return journey—we are getting to
the point at last—the tickets were collected
at Battersea Bridge, your tickets were returns
to Victoria, but the Anstruthers had returns
to Clapham Junction only, and accordingly
Mr. Anstruther was invited to pay excess fare
on them.

As a matter of fact the price for a return
ticket from Victoria to the Palace is exactly
the same as a return from Clapham Junction
to the Palace, and such being the case, you
considered that the collector had no right to
demand an excess fare on Mr. Anstruther’s
tickets. You were wrong. Mr. Anstruther,
you say, paid the excess on the ground that it
was merely a concession on the part of the
Company to those booking at Victoria to
charge them the same fare as those booking
at Clapham Junction; this may or may not
be the case, it is beside the question.

The matter is entirely one of contract
between yourself and the Railway Company.
They contract to carry you for a certain sum
to a certain place; in your case it was from
Victoria to the Palace and back, and in the
case of Mr. Anstruther and his sister from
Clapham Junction to the Palace and back.
On their return, therefore, to Clapham Junction,
the contract between themselves and the
Railway Company was completed, and on their
remaining in the train and travelling up to
Victoria a new contract was commenced
between themselves and the Company. Mr.
Anstruther was right, therefore, in paying the
excess demanded, although his reason for
doing so was not the right one.

To turn to quite another matter, I see that
you want my advice on a point in connection
with bicycles. So you also have not escaped
the cycling craze of the day. Oh, Dorothy,
after this I shall not be surprised to hear that
you have taken to golf!

I am very sorry that you should have been
annoyed by the insolence of the cabman; I
am afraid our London jehus are not called
“growlers” without reason, and some of
them are only too ready to take advantage of
ladies, when travelling without male escort, to
insult them with impunity.

In offering the man twopence extra for
carrying your bicycle on his cab, Aunt Anne
was paying him not only more than he
deserved, but more than he was legally
entitled to demand.

It may appear to be very ridiculous to the
unlegal mind, such as yours, my dear Dorothy,
but it has been decided by the London magistrates
that a bicycle is not luggage.

The result of this decision is that a cabman
is not entitled to charge anything extra for
carrying a bicycle on his cab, unless he has
previously made an arrangement with his fare.

This piece of legal information you might
bear in mind and make use of on a future
occasion; if, therefore, a cabman ever behaves
rudely towards you again when you are paying
him extra for carrying your bicycle, just give
him his correct fare, and if he is troublesome,
take his number and send it to your legal
adviser, or, in other words, to

Your affectionate cousin,
Bob Briefless.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

MEDICAL.

{31}

STUDY AND STUDIO.

OUR OPEN LETTER BOX.

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE.

MISCELLANEOUS.

{32}

THINGS IN SEASON, IN MARKET, AND KITCHEN.

NOVEMBER.

November is one of our months of plenty,
and a walk round the great wholesale provision
markets gives us a very bright picture.
However gloomy the weather may be outside,
there is “good cheer” abounding here. We
have game and poultry in abundance and just
in their prime; the bag that sportsmen take
delight in filling is here emptied for the benefit
of those who rarely or never breathe the air
of the moors where the birds flourished so
happily. Rabbits and hares, once so fleet of
foot, hang limply from every available hook,
and even the barn-door fowl is a finer specimen
than earlier in the season, while geese,
turkeys, and Surrey capons tempt their purchase,
whether we intended it or not.

Freshwater fish appear among their sea-born
brethren, and help in giving us variety.
Of fruits and nuts we have large choice, and
the ripe grains and pulse foods are all garnered,
while most of the root vegetables are ready
too. Of a truth at this time of the year there
is no lack of food stuffs.

Neither is there any lack of other material
wherewith to make our tables gay. Dahlias
and chrysanthemums, rich foliage, hedgerow
gleanings and late grasses, these will stay with
us until close upon Christmas, if we take the
precaution of sheltering our plants from frost,
and of drying our leaves, giving a touch of
gum to either flower or leaf, when we see one
that is inclined to fall.

None who are able to cultivate a flowering
plant, or to take a walk on to a piece of waste
land or in a lane, need ever plead excuse for
an ungarnished table, and much pleasure is
missed by those who think the table can do as
well without garnishing as with it, providing
there be plenty of good food upon it. We
are not of their opinion. “A table well-set
is half spread.” Care in pleasing the eye
will do a vast deal towards aiding good
digestion.

Let us look more particularly at what we
might call the distinctive features of the
month’s provisions. Pike and tench among
the freshwater fish, before mentioned; oysters,
skate, and gurnet among the ordinary. Grouse,
snipe, teal, pheasants, hares, and rabbits, also
venison amongst game; while geese and
turkeys are rapidly advancing in size and
quality.

Celery is fast getting to perfection, Scotch
kale is fine, so are savoys and salsify.

Chestnuts, filberts, walnuts, figs, and grapes,
in addition to the grand autumn wealth of
pears, apples, quinces, and golden oranges,
not to mention the preserved fruits which are
just beginning to be shown in the windows.

What we will call our characteristic menu of
the month ought, then, to be an easy one
to compile. We give an alternative one for
those who may find themselves unable to
provide the first-named.

Menus.

Let us take for soup: A purée of chestnuts,
or cream of celery.

For our fish course: Skate à la crème, or
baked tench.

For an entrée: Baked ham with wine sauce,
or curried rabbit.

For a roast: Wild duck and orange sauce,
or roast pheasant and fried potatoes.

As an entremet: Scalloped salsify, or
Jerusalem artichokes.

As a sweet: Apple mirotons and quince
jelly.

The recipe for chestnut soup has been given
in these columns before. To recapitulate it as
briefly as possible is to remind our readers
that the chestnuts must be first boiled until
the husk and peel can be easily removed, and
then to boil them again with minced onion, a
few herbs, a carrot, and an ounce or more of
butter, and sufficient water to just cover them.
This should afterwards be rubbed through a
sieve until a purée is obtained, a pint of
boiling milk added, and a teaspoonful of
cornflour (previously wetted) stirred in to
thicken it. Boil up once more, then serve at
once. It should be of the consistency of
cream.

Cream of celery soup is made by stewing a
couple of heads of celery, cut fine, with one
or two onions and any garden herbs in a little
water until thoroughly soft, then rubbing all
through a sieve, adding sufficient milk to make
up the requisite quantity, a spoonful of cornflour
to thicken, seasoning, butter, and after
this has boiled add a little cream and a few
croutons of fried bread.

Skate is a cheap fish and one that is somewhat
despised in our country, abroad it is
better understood. Young skate are called
ray or maids, and their flesh is very delicate.
Skate is improved by being kept for a day or
two in cold weather. Cut it into neat pieces
and simmer in white sauce until done, then
lay the pieces on a hot dish, sprinkle crumbs
and a little grated cheese over with a touch of
cayenne pepper, and let them slightly brown
in the oven, then pour the sauce around the
fish. Serve very hot.

Tench, being a pond-fish, and apt to have a
slightly muddy flavour, should lie in salt water
for a few hours. Rub it all over with lemon-juice,
put it into a tin with one or two minced
shalots, some parsley, crumbs, and a little
dab of butter, and bake for half an hour or
more if the fish is large. Serve in the same
dish.

A rabbit jointed and cooked slowly in good
gravy made from stock thickened and flavoured
with a spoonful of curry-paste or powder,
onions and any other vegetable liked, seasoning
and a soupçon of vinegar, makes a
delicious variation from the more ordinary
stew of rabbit. Serve boiled rice in a separate
dish.

Orange sauce, or an orange salad, is the
correct accompaniment to roast wild duck.
For the sauce: Squeeze the juice of three or
four oranges and stir in a teaspoonful of
arrowroot to thicken; add a little sugar if
liked. Wild duck requires a quick hot oven,
but should not remain in it more than three-quarters
of an hour, as the gravy should run
from it as from a rump steak. Serve fried
potatoes and browned crumbs with this as
with the roast pheasant; the garnish for the
duck would be a lemon cut in quarters, for the
pheasant the crumbs are sufficient.

Those who possess a few scallop-shells or
the little fire-proof chinaware ramequin pans
will find no difficulty in making use of salsify,
and this, one of our daintiest, is one of our
least-known vegetables. The roots require
scraping, then boiling in salt water until they
are tender enough to mash, adding then
pepper, butter, and a beaten egg. Fill the
pans and sprinkle crumbs on the top, then
bake in a quick oven till slightly browned.

For a miroton of apples: Pare and core
without dividing six or eight good-sized
apples; cut them in slices to form rings.
Place in a saucepan a piece of butter the size
of an egg, a quarter of a pound of sugar, some
grated lemon-rind and the juice. Simmer
the apples in this, and when tender arrange
them in the centre of a dish, and when cool
garnish with spoonfuls of quince jelly. A
little cream might be poured around the base.
Or the apples might be left whole and steamed,
then coated with the jelly, the place of the
core being filled up with whipped cream, and
the dish garnished according to fancy.

As in summer-time we arrange our dishes
for cool effects, so in winter months we may
try to make as much contrast of bright colour
as possible. All these things are worth
studying, for it is in such details that the
hand of the true culinary artist is shown.