"Half-grown as yet, a child and vain,

She cannot fight the fight of death.

What is she cut from love and faith?"

Knowledge and Wisdom, TENNYSON.

It was long before the two Mrs. Keiths met again. Mrs. Curtis and Grace

were persuaded to spend the spring and summer in Scotland, and Alick's

leave of absence was felt to be due to Mr. Clare, and thus it was that

the first real family gathering took place on occasion of the opening of

the institution that had grown out of the Burnaby Bargain. This work

had cost Colonel Keith and Mr. Mitchell an infinity of labour and

perseverance before even the preliminaries could be arranged, but they

contrived at length to carry it out, and by the fourth spring after

the downfall of the F. U. E. E. a house had been erected for the

convalescents, whose wants were to be attended to by a matron, assisted

by a dozen young girls in training for service.

The male convalescents were under the discipline of Sergeant O'Brien

and the whole was to be superintended by Colonel and Mrs. Keith. Ermine

undertook to hear a class of the girls two or three times a week,

and lower rooms had been constructed with a special view to her being

wheeled into them, so as to visit the convalescents, and give them her

attention and sympathy. Mary Morris was head girl, most of the others

were from Avonmouth, but two pale Londoners came from Mr. Touchett's

district, and a little motherless lassie from the --th Highlanders was

brought down with the nursery establishment, on which Mrs. Alexander

Keith now practised the "Hints on the management of Infants."

May was unusually propitious, and after an orthodox tea-drinking, the

new pupils and all the Sunday-schools were turned out to play on the

Homestead slopes, with all the world to look on at them. It was a warm,

brilliant day, of joyous blossom and lively green, and long laughing

streaks of sunlight on the sea, and no one enjoyed it more than did

Ermine, as she sat in her chair delighting in the fresh sweetness of the

old thorns, laughing at the freaks of the scampering groups of children,

gaily exchanging pleasant talk with one friend after another, and most

of all with Rachel, who seemed to gravitate back to her whenever any

summons had for a time interrupted their affluence of conversation.

And all the time Ermine's footstool was serving as a table for the

various flowers that two children were constantly gathering in the grass

and presenting to her, to Rachel, or to each other, with a constant

stream of not very comprehensible prattle, full of pretty gesticulation

that seemed to make up for the want of distinctness. The yellow-haired,

slenderly-made, delicately-featured boy, whose personal pronouns were

just developing, and his consonants very scanty, though the elder of

the two, dutifully and admiringly obeyed the more distinct, though less

connected, utterances of the little dark-eyed girl, eked out by

pretty imperious gestures, that seemed already to enchain the little

white-frocked cavalier to her service. All the time it was droll to see

how the two ladies could pay full attention to the children, while going

on with their own unbroken stream of talk.




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