daughter had sent up a message to the nursery, "Might she trouble Mrs. Nurse to step downstairs for a minute?"

And on her entering the housekeeper's room, she had displayed a large handkerchief, having an artistic and warlike border of quarrelsome cats and dogs. With tears in her eyes the young woman spoke of the dear little master's gift and the hard labour it must have cost him.

"And we should never have knowed who did it, but for this, which told the tale. For he came and went so quiet, that mother she thought it must have been a dog as had got into her room, never speaking a word, and coming right away without any one knowing! His handkercher I knowed directly, 'cause he showed it to me only the other day. He's a rale little gentleman, isn't he now?"

Nurse had wisely begged Dame Christy's daughter not to mention, or let her mother speak of the gift, but to leave the child in happy ignorance that his good deed had been discovered. She instinctively felt that "her boy" who would "do good by stealth" would "blush to find it fame."

But now she tells her master all about it, dwelling with pardonable pride on the "sweet nature of the bairn."

That same evening Phil's father stands by his boy's crib and looks down at the bonny face as it lies on the pillow, while he strokes the curly crop with a loving hand.

The blue eyes are just a little bit sleepy. Nurse has tucked him up for the night, and drawn down the blind. But they are not too sleepy to shine with love and admiration as they look up into the kind face bending over him.

"So, my little son gave nurse a fright the other day?"

"Please, father, I'm very sorry."

The child's lips quiver, but the soft eyes still look trustingly upwards. "I was really trying to be a gentleman—and—and you said gentlemen didn't tell when they tried to be kind, didn't you?"

And now father quite understands the motive which has closed his child's lips—the tender sense of manly honour, which, even in its early growth, is strong enough to influence the heart of his boy.

That Phil is already "learning the luxury of doing good," and beginning a chain of those "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love," which form "the best portion of a good man's life," fills his heart with a glow of thankfulness.

He stoops, and kissing the pleading, wistful face, says—

"Yes, Phil. Yes, dear little lad, I did say so. You need not tell me any more unless you like. I quite trust you. Remember always that you are a gentleman—or better still, try and follow in the steps of that Perfect Example of a loving and gentle Man—and you will make father very happy."

BOXER.

One by one the passengers' heads appeared at the windows. Such a variety of heads, too! Some wrapped in handkerchiefs, some with hats all awry, some wearing neither hat nor cap, and all looking ruffled and rubbed up, as if a minute before their owners had been snoring in peaceful forgetfulness that they were not in their own quiet beds at home.

This, very likely, was the case, for it was five o'clock on a warm summer morning, and the train from the North had been tearing along with its burden of drowsy passengers ever since nine o'clock the evening before.

Was it any wonder that this abrupt stoppage—here, where there was not even a platform in sight—somewhat disturbed and irritated the travellers?

"A most irregular proceeding!" cried one indignant gentleman who, in his anxiety to see what was wrong, had pulled the blue window-blind over his bald head.

"It's always the way," cried another fretfully. "Just my luck! Delaying the train, just when I particularly wished to be in town early."

"Perhaps the train is on fire! Oh, guard! guard!" screamed a frightened old lady a few doors further down. "Help me out! This is dreadful!"

But the guard, a kindly, warm-hearted Scotchman, was far too busy to attend to any one but the poor heart-broken young mother, who was clinging to him in her first paroxysm of grief and fear.

"Noo! noo!" he was saying. "Dinna be greeting sae sairly, mem! We'll all be doing our best to find the bit bairn. Jack has gone to tak' a look along the line. But the train's o'erdue, and we maun get to yonder station before we can have asseestance."

Then the news was carried the length of the Scotch express.

A little child had fallen out of the train while his mother was asleep. The lady's dog had gone too!

All the heads disappeared, with different expressions of sorrow for the poor young mother, and that was all.

Not quite, though!

One bright face reappeared. A girlish hand unfastened the carriage door, and in another moment a young lady had scrambled down to the six-foot way and, with her handbag and a bundle of wraps, was making her way to an open door, from which came the sound of bitter, hysterical weeping.

"Guard, I have come to see if I can help in any way. What are you going to do?"

"There is but one way, mem. Yonder comes Jack. He's seen nothing, I'm fearing. We must put the gude leddie down at the next station, and she maun get an engine there and go seek the puir bit bairn."

"Very well, guard. Then I will stay with this lady until we stop." And as the old man thankfully returned to his duties and the train was quickly put in motion, she sat down and put a pair of sisterly arms round the distracted stranger.

"Let us think what we will do," she said in her kind cheery voice, "and let us remember that the angels have been about your little one all this time. It may not be as bad as we think."

"We? Who are you?" asked the dazed, bewildered mother. "I don't know you."

"I am Hetty Saunders. I am going to London to spend the last days of my holiday with my brother. But I can spare the time to help you a little, you know. Let us forget that I am a stranger."

And with true womanly capableness she took the management of affairs into her own hands, drawing Mrs. Hayling on to tell her all she would about her little Willie—and something, too, of Boxer, the gentle, clever Scotch collie.

Half an hour ago they had both been with her. Where were they now?

Let us go back and look at the other side of this little story—Willie and Boxer's side.

They were both of an inquiring turn of mind. This was only their second railway journey; and it was not, therefore, very wonderful that Willie's fingers and Boxer's sharp, inquisitive nose, seemed determined to examine everything.

You can guess that it was with no small relief that Mrs. Hayling saw her little son's round blue eyes grow dim with sleep, as she tucked him up—for the sixth time at least—in the thick railway rug, and told