eyes dancing with the light of the morning of life. Dear unclouded child-eyes! How soon they lose that first sweet innocent gaze! How soon the cares and sins of this weary world shadow their depths, and the frank gaze which tells of faith in all that is lovely and beautiful is changed into one of distrust, and sometimes of sorrow.

"Well, little Miss Joy!" Patience Harrison said, as the child tripped across the row, and flung her arms round the waiting mother's neck.

"Well, dear Goody Patience. Why are you sitting here all alone, and looking so sad? Why, Goody, dear Goody, you are crying!"

For the child's loving caress had touched the fountain of tears, and, sobbing, the poor mother said—

"Oh, little Miss Joy! Jack has run away. I couldn't sleep, so I came down here."

"Run away, Jack! Oh, how naughty of him to grieve you! But he will come back—of course he will. Don't cry, my dear Goody Patience; don't cry. Of course he'll come back. What was it all about?"

"A fuss with his poor Aunt Amelia, as usual; and Jack was rude, I know, and he did not behave well; but——"

"I am afraid," Joy said thoughtfully, "Jack is not a good boy to Miss Pinckney. He is no end good to me, and I love him dearly, and so does Uncle Bobo. He says he is like a fine ship—all sails set and flags flying and no compass—which gets on rocks and quicksands, because there is no guide. That is what Uncle Bobo says."

"It is quite true—quite true," Patience said. "I do not excuse him, though I know he has had a great deal to try his temper in his Aunt Amelia's house."

"I dare say he will come back, and be a good boy. I'll talk to him," Joy said, with a wise nod of her golden head. "I'll talk to him, and he will never run away again."

"But, Joy, he is gone; and though Mr. Paterson thinks he knows where to find him, I don't believe he will find him."

"I must go indoors now; for here is Peter coming to take down our shutters, and Uncle Bobo will be wanting his breakfast, and I always help Susan to get it ready. I shall be on the watch, and the minute Jack comes back I will run over."

Then, with showers of kisses on the pale, woe-struck face, little Miss Joy was gone.

CHAPTER II.

LITTLE MISS JOY.

Little Miss Joy was the pride of the row, and always seemed to bring a ray of sunshine with her.

She lived with an old man she called "Uncle Bobo," who kept a curiously mixed assortment of wares, in the little dark shop where he had lived, man and boy, for fifty years.

He was professedly a dealer in nautical instruments, the manufacture of which was carried on in Birmingham or Sheffield. Every now and then a large packing-case would excite the inhabitants of the row, as it was borne on one of the Yarmouth carts constructed on purpose for the convenience of passing through the rows, and dropped down with a tremendous thud on the pavement opposite Mr. Boyd's door.

No wheels but the wheels of these carts were ever heard in the row, unless it were a wheelbarrow or a truck. And none of these were welcome, as it was difficult for foot-passengers to pass if one of these vehicles stopped the way.

The nautical instruments by no means represented all Mr. Boyd's stock-in-trade. Compasses and aneroids and ship's lamps were the superior articles to be sold. But there were endless odds and ends—"curiosities"—bits of carving, two or three old figure-heads of ships, little ship-lanthorns, and knives of all shapes and sizes, balls of twine, rolls of cable, and all packed into the narrow limits of the tiny shop.

"Uncle Bobo" was coming home one night—a Christmas night—a few years before the time my story opens, when he heard a wailing cry as he fitted the latch-key into his own door.

The cry attracted him, and looking down on the threshold of his home he saw—a bundle, as it seemed to him, tightly tied up in a handkerchief. Stooping to pick it up, the faint wailing cry was repeated, and Uncle Bobo nearly let the bundle fall.

"It's a child—it's an infant!" he exclaimed. "Where's it dropped from? Here, Susan!" he called to his faithful old servant, "here's a Christmas-box for you; look alive!"

Susan, who had appeared with a light, groped through the various articles in the shop, and received the bundle from her master's hand.

"Dear life, Mr. Boyd, what are you going to do with it then?"

"Can't say," was the answer, as Mr. Boyd rolled into the parlour, where a bright fire was burning and the kettle singing on the hob. "Unpack the parcel, Sue, and let's have a look."

Susan untied many knots and unrolled fold after fold of the long scarf-shawl of black and white check in which the child was wrapped: and then out came, like a butterfly out of a chrysalis, a little dainty girl of about two years old, who, looking up at Mr. Boyd, said, "Dad-da!"

There was no sign of ill-usage about the child. She was neatly dressed, and round her waist a purse was tied. Mr. Boyd fitted his large black-rimmed spectacles on his nose, and while Susan sat with the child on her knee, warming her pink toes in the ruddy blaze, he untied the ribbon with which the purse was fastened to the child's waist, and opened it.

It was an ordinary purse, with pockets, and within the centre one, fastened by a little spring, was one sovereign and a bit of paper, on which was written:

"It is the last money I have in the world Take care of the bearer till you hear more. Keep her for me."

Eight years had gone by since that Christmas night, and nothing more had ever been heard about this "Christmas-box;" but Uncle Bobo never repented that he had kept the child. She had been the interest and delight of his old age, and he had fondly called her "My little Joy."

The neighbours wondered a little, and some looked severely on this deed of kindness of Mr. Boyd's.

The person who looked most severely at it was Miss Amelia Pinckney, who kept a small haberdasher's and milliner's shop opposite Mr. Boyd's. Now neighbours in the Yarmouth rows, especially opposite neighbours, are very near neighbours indeed; and if it was almost possible to shake hands over the heads of the passers-by from the upper windows, it was quite possible to hear what was said, especially in summer, when the narrow casements were thrown open to admit what air was stirring.

Thus Miss Pinckney's voice, which was neither soft nor low, reached many ears in the near vicinity, and Mr. Boyd was well aware that she had called him "a foolish old fellow," adding that "the workhouse was the place for the child, and that she had no patience with his folly."

Truth to tell, Miss Pinckney had but little patience with any one. She had, as she conceived, done a noble deed by allowing her stepsister and her boy to take up their abode with her. But for this deed she took out very heavy interest; and poor Mrs. Harrison, who was, as her sister continually reminded her, "worse than a widow"—a deserted wife—had to pay dearly for the kindness which had been done her. Many a time she had determined to leave the uncongenial roof, and go forth to face the world alone; but then she was penniless, and although she worked, and worked hard too, to keep herself and her boy, by executing all Miss Pinckney's millinery orders, and acting also as general servant as well as shopwoman of the establishment, still she was never allowed to forget that she was under an obligation to her sister, and that she ought to be "thankful for all her mercies!"

"It is not as if it was only yourself, Patience. Think what it is to have a boy like yours! Enough to drive one mad, with his monkey tricks and his impudence. I don't say that I regret taking you in. Blood is thicker than water, and you are my poor father's child, though he had cause to rue the day he married your silly mother—he never had a day's peace after that."

Such sentiments,