I don't want him to feel his coming such a favour.'

So Alda went; and must it be owned, if there was more peace in the house, there was also a certain flatness after the incessant excitements of the former part of the year. At least so Geraldine felt, and hated herself for feeling, when the numbers had come down to 'the peace establishment,' and she had no companions but Stella and Theodore through the greater part of the day. She had been recommended to walk, when the weather permitted, for half an hour every day; and whenever it was possible, Felix contrived that he or Lance should be her companion; but as the days shortened, and it became less easy to contrive this, the constitutional turns up and down the narrow garden were more dispiriting than sitting occupied upstairs, especially when she viewed this distaste as frightful unthankfulness; and even when one of the brothers took her out in the street, or to the 'People's Park,' though she was happy with them, the wearisome sameness and dull ugliness of the town oppressed and wearied her; and to be taken out by Wilmet on a Saturday was more wearing still. Each brother was her devoted cavalier; but Wilmet, though kind and considerate, made airing Cherry a secondary object; and to be set upon a high chair in a shop, to see Wilmet bargain, was what she did not love. She might have admired to see Wilmet's perfect knowledge of articles and their value, and the manifest esteem in which that experience was held by the respectable tradesmen, who did not scruple to tell her that they had thought 'this will just suit Miss Underwood;' while her scorn and indignation at an encounter with a Cheap Jack were something rich. But though Cherry could describe such an expedition with humour that threw Felix and Lance into a convulsion of merriment, it was very wearisome to her; and the more she knew it ought to be instructive, the more it depressed her, and made her feel, as never before, the straitness of the family means. She longed wearily at times for the sight of something beautiful. Edgar's descriptions came back on her with an almost sick longing. She had made much progress in drawing, but the want of criticism, instruction, or models, made her feel baffled; and when her brothers and sisters admired most, she was most dissatisfied. Edgar's criticism alone was worth anything to her æsthetic sense, and gave her real assistance; and his not coming home was a great loss to her art, as well as to her affection and intellect. Those windows that he opened to her of all lovely scenes and forms in nature or art, his brilliant stories of artist society and foreign manners, could not but be greatly missed as she lived her monotonous life, not without intellectual interest, for that came to her through the help she was able to render to Felix in his newspaper work, and the books she reviewed or discussed with him; but it was not the living interest of actual communication at secondhand with that outer world, which looked so full of beauty, and of all that was bright and charming; and then poor little Cherry applied to herself all the warnings about not loving the world.

Her aspiring compositions and her studies in drawing she almost laid aside in a fit of hopeless disgust, and she applied herself to what was less improving, but more immediately profitable. She and Lance took to the manufacture of Christmas cards, she taking the sentiment and he the comedy; and what they produced by their joint efforts were pretty and clever enough to bring in an amount of pocket-money that was very agreeable to those who otherwise would have had no claim to any.

The chief outer interest was, as usual, parish affairs. Mr. Bevan was too ill to come home; but Mr. Mowbray Smith's resignation was accepted, and he was to go at the beginning of the new year, while his successor was reported to be elderly and wise.

Another interest, that was not at all bad for Cherry, was stirred up by her brothers. There was an interminable family belonging to one of the printers, who died, leaving them in circumstances that somewhat parodied those of the Underwoods themselves; and in which the example as well as the counsel of the young master was no doubt a great incentive and assistance to the pillars of the still humbler house. There was a perennial supply of 'little Lightfoots,' to fill the office elegantly termed printer's devil; and the existing imp being taken young from school, Felix had his education on his conscience, and asked Cherry to give him lessons after hours. She was at first desperately afraid of the boy, and only accepted the work when she found that if she did not, Felix would impose it on himself; but by-and-by she became enough interested, and enjoyed enough devotion from her pupil, to make the time she daily expended upon him not far from one of the pleasures of her life.

So came on a winter of unusual bitterness; and the holidays filled the house, bringing Bernard back under an entirely new phase. At Stoneborough he had discovered that it was some distinction to be an Underwood of Vale Leston, and his accession of dignity was enormous. He regarded the Nareses from a monstrous elevation; and thus infinitely scandalized Angela, who had a great hatred of pretension, and whose laughter threatened to dissolve their mutual alliance, offensive and defensive. Their janglings were a novelty, and not a pleasant one; and one bitter afternoon, when a sore throat had made Felix come up early from the shop, Cherry quite rejoiced that Bernard was reported to be reading downstairs.

And there sat Felix by the fire, with Theodore at his feet, humming in rivalry of the big kettle, which had just been brought in, and was soon followed by Lance, whistling as he came upstairs.

'Look here!' and Angela, who, for her bane at Brompton, had her full share of the family talent for caricature, showed him a likeness of Bernard strutting down the High Street, turning his back on certain figures in the distance; and beneath was written—

'There was a young Bear of Stoneborough,
Who thought his gentility thorough;
To his townsfolk he said,
"Snobs! I'll cut them all dead,"
This high-bred young Bear of Stoneborough.'

'Capital, Angel!' said Lance; 'but don't show it to him; he's a horrid Bear to poke fun at.'

'Oh, but he does get into such jolly rages!'

'It is beyond being jolly,' said Lance. 'I did this once too often last holidays; and I don't think he has got over it yet, though I promised never to do it again.'

'The more reason I should,' said Angela, laughing saucily in his face, though both spoke under their breath.

'No,' said Lance. 'Consider! He is absurdly stuck up; but anything to disgust him with the Nareses is good.'

'I see no harm in Jem Nares,' said democratic Angela. 'I'll not have him cut! give me my picture.'

'No, I promised he should not be done again.'

'Promise for yourself another time.'

She snatched, and there was a sparring match. Lance held off with one hand, and with the other dashed her drawing into the fire, where it fell on the top of some black coals; and as he relaxed his grasp, she sprang to rescue it. Felix looked up in time to see the kettle toppling over. He flung Theodore out of the way of the boiling stream that rushed from lid and spout as the whole descended on the hearth, amid cries from Angela and Theodore that brought all the others together; nor could the little one be pacified, even though Wilmet ascertained that he had only been touched by one boiling drop.

'But Felix!' exclaimed Lance; and they all turned.

'Never mind,' he said, but with more of a contraction of the lips than a smile; 'only my neck and arm. Here, Lance, help me;' presenting the end of his sleeve, and setting his teeth.

The hasty vigorous pull, made in ignorance on both sides, removed the coat; but Felix gave something between a gasp and a cry, tried to totter to a