really loved you, he wouldn't talk so much about it. Mr. Burton says he's dying for love,"—here she smiled roguishly, and peeped up in her aunt's face; "and he certainly has nothing of death from grief about him!"

"Well, the lawyer—what is your objection there?"

"Oh, he's ten thousand times more objectionable! Mr. Burton is only a commonplace squire, looking like one in his top-boots, talking like one, and with a loud voice proclaiming himself lord of the manor, rooks, hounds, horses, and whippers-in! I don't think he's a bad man, yet there is something unreadable too about him, which debars confidence in his goodness; but he's a very disagreeable person, always reminding me of aunt Sylvia's glass of bark in the morning—an amiable invention, but most unpleasant to the palate. But Mr. Dalby,—oh! he's quite another thing!—thing he is; too finical to be a man, too useless to be a woman, he is a compound of mock sentiment and unamiability; he drawls out his words, looking you sideways in the face, never giving you a bold, earnest look; he treats you like a sugar-plumb, and seems afraid of melting you by the fervour of a full-face regard, and he never has a kind or charitable word for any one; he's an insinuating creature, but not in my case, as he endeavours to be."

"Hush, Minnie, you must not judge hastily or harshly."

"I don't, dear aunt," and she loosed one gentle hand, and put her arm round the other's neck; "but I have noticed so many unamiable traits in his character—but aunt Sylvia thinks him perfection."

"I suppose I must not now speak of my protegé—our young clergyman?"

Minnie looked embarrassed. "Dearest aunty," she said at last, "I don't want to marry; I'm very happy: why so earnestly seek for one to take me away from you all? Mr. Skaife is sincere, I believe, in saying, he likes me; I like him as an acquaintance, but I shouldn't like to marry him. He's very good, kind, and charitable, I daresay; but I think he wants that sacred fire which, in his sacred calling, makes the chilly approach, to cheer themselves by the glowing warmth."

"Oh, my dear child! your heart has not spoken, this is the truth; when it speaks, may it be for a worthy object—that's all I pray. I like Mr. Skaife: for my sake, dear, try and do so likewise."

Before a reply could be given, the bedroom door opened with fracas, and aunt Sylvia suddenly appeared. She was totally different in appearance to her sister. Dorcas was plump, good-tempered, meek-looking, about forty-five years of age. Sylvia was some five years her senior; a little, thin, sharp-faced woman—one whose very dress looked meagre; not the richest brocade could appear rich on so shapeless an anatomy; it would trail on the ground, limp, and disheartened from any attempt to look well. She had the strangest eyes in the world—a dark, dingy, chestnut brown, of which the pupil was certainly not larger than a pin's head; thin nose, thin lips, thin hair, hands, and voice, completed aunt Sylvia—with the addition of the very thinnest mind in the world. It was like a screw-press; put any thing bulky within it, it was compressed instanter to a mummy, and thence doled out in such small particles, that it was inevitably lost in the general mass of which aunt Sylvia was formed.

"I declare, Minnie," she whistled forth in her shrilly tone, "you would provoke a saint; here have I been calling you at the top of my voice this hour, and you must have heard me! Really, Dorcas, it is too bad; you always encourage the child—you, too, must have heard me."

"I have only been here a few moments," placidly answered her sister.

"Then your conversation must have been most engrossing, for such deafness to have fallen upon you!" and she looked suspiciously from one to the other.

"We were speaking of——"

Before Minnie could complete her sentence, her door opened a third time, and admitted uncle Juvenal. We will only say of him, that he was the bond of union between the two sisters; not stout, not thin, not cross, not quiet; older by three years than Dorcas, younger by two than Sylvia, being forty-eight; prim, snuff-coloured, and contented, having but one desire in the world—the one common to the three, to see Minnie a wife. A warm discussion ensued between him and Sylvia, relative to some words which had passed between the squire and doctor, fostered by their mutual hopes of gaining Minnie, which hope was encouraged—nay, the niece promised to each—by his patron and patroness. Now, Juvenal came to seek the cause, and chide her propensity for loneliness; and while he and Sylvia were warmly debating their disputed points, Dorcas and Minnie crept out of the room, and the former gained the day this time, for she and her niece, this latter with only her garden hat on, left the hall by a side door, accompanied by Mr. Skaife, who had been quietly waiting—it might have been by Dorcas's cognizance—in a shrubbery through which they passed on a visit of benevolence. Juvenal and Sylvia, finding the birds escaped, descended to the garden, when they discovered that the same thing had occurred respecting the squire and lawyer; both had disappeared. So the brother and sister sat down to talk it quietly over, which terminated as all previous talkings on the same subject had done before—by their completely disagreeing in their respective views, and consequently falling out; in other words, having a violent quarrel. And poor little Minnie—the subject of all these commotions—was quietly walking towards the village with her aunt Dorcas, and her selection of a suitor, Mr. Skaife, who, to do him justice, was the most sincere lover of the three; he cared but little whether Minnie were rich or poor, provided she could be brought by any means to look smilingly upon him. He was only a poor curate, 'twas true; but then some day he hoped to be, perhaps, a bishop—Who might say? And in either or any case, he would have chosen her to share all with him. Perhaps she had been correct in saying he did not possess the sacred fire necessary for his calling; but that fault lay to the account of his parents, who had possibly brought him up to the church as a mere profession, when it should be a voluntary choice. If, as she supposed, he did not possess the fire necessary for martyrdom, if summoned to that glory, he certainly did the fire of love for the fair girl beside him; and while she wished he were any thing but a lover, both for the sake of a certain pleasure she felt in his company, and for her aunt's sake, he was wondering whether he ever should win her?—when?—and how?—and in this mood they walked on. Many long years before our tale commenced, a certain country gentleman named Formby and his wife were the residents at Gatestone Hall, the fine old-fashioned place we have just quitted; they were homely and primitive, and withal majestic as the oak-panelled walls of the hospitable home which gave a welcome to many a guest in that portion of her Majesty's domains called Yorkshire, where the "canniness" of its inhabitants consists most in the almost unparalleled method they possess, of winning the way to the heart by kindness and genuine homely hospitality, of which Mr. and Mrs. Formby were well-chosen representatives. They had five children—four daughters and one son. They never troubled themselves as to whether these would marry—that was an affair of nature, and nature was handmaiden at Gatestone Hall. However, art—or some adverse god or goddess—crept in, and marred her course. Of five, only two obeyed her law. Juliana, the eldest, a fine dashing girl, attracted the attention of the Earl of Ripley at a race ball; and, six weeks afterwards, became his Countess. The youngest of all, Baby, as they called her (Jenny was her name, to the amazement of her family, which appeared impressed with the idea, that baby she was, and ever would remain), married, at seventeen, a poor half-pay officer for love; and true love it was. The little god likes poverty best, after all; he