clothed with straggling gorse bushes killed by the frost of last winter. Here and there a green shoot tipped with gold thrust itself out of the brown. A few plants of broom rattled their clusters of black pods. Wherever it could find room to grow, heather specked the bank with clusters of pink blossoms, and the tiny wild thyme scented the air.

Out of the dead gorse thickets rose the white stems-like dry bones-of apple and pear trees, which thoughtlessly planted, in days perhaps when there was no pressing necessity for economy, on stony ground had found life an insupportable burden. The guards of oak paling which half a century ago had been carefully provided were still standing-like rails round a tomb. From some tree not quite dead depended an occasional apple ready from sheer vexation and disgust to drop into the dead gorse below.

The river, on which countless boats might have been seen in the summer, was nearly deserted, and would have been quite so but that trippers never seem to have quite done tripping. On the bank was a dismantled booth, its ruins still adorned with a torn advertisement of 'Hop Ale.' Such as it was, an old horse had already seized on the reversion of the dilapidated shed, and was feasting (not very eagerly) on the high thorn hedge which had formed its back wall. The absence of even the tiniest blade of grass no doubt gave him keen premonitions of winter.

As

The three girls arrived in due course at the booth and stood looking over the bank into the river. Below them rushed a rapid locally called a 'ford'-lucus a non. The river was low, and a rocky ledge diverted all the water into the 'ford,' which thus became by no means easily navigable for unskilled rowers. they stood gazing down into the rapid a boat came slowly zigzagging up the river. The two rowers-beehive-backed,' as the local saying is-did little with their weak alternate strokes to propel it. When the boat got into the ford it stopped, like a jibbing horse at the bottom of a hill, and expressed in its dull way a desire to return whence it came.

'My!' shrilled the child,' 'if it ain't 'Arry!' The two men seemed glad of an excuse to stop rowing as they may have considered it--and turned upwards towards the voice moist red faces, whence shortly issued hoarse shouts of recognition. The boat seized on the opportunity for withdrawing into calmer waters, and then permitted itself to be run aground at the bottom of the ford. By the time that the two oarsmen had managed to crawl

out clumsily and to seat themselves panting on the bank, the girls had come down to them, the eldest apparently with some reluctance.

What with mist rising and dews descending, even the dry brown grass on the bank was no longer a fitting seat, and it was not long before the two younger girls were persuaded that it would be 'jollier' to be rowed down stream in 'that lovely boat' than to walk home alone. But alas! there was only room for two passengers. The young men apologised to Margaret-whose presence they did not in the least desire for the necessity of leaving her, and Margaret accepted the apologies in the spirit in which they were offered. 'I can very well walk back by myself,' she said good-humouredly. Women whose girlhood is past, and who are too modest to imagine that it may have been succeeded by something better, soon get used to finding themselves put on one side. But there are operations that use does not rob of their

pain.

The boat pushed off with its new freight, the 'beehive-backed' men rowing alternately as before, and Margaret, after watching it for a minute or two as it was borne away rapidly by the stream, turned to retrace her steps. The shorter way to the town would have been by the river bank, but she took her way up the hill again. For all that she had professed not to care, she felt the desertion was unkind. She had come chiefly to take care of her young friends, and the consciousness that she had been of no use was an unsatisfactory reward for the performance of an unpleasant task. She felt quite down-hearted when she got back to the gate leading into the orchard, and it was then that she bethought her of her apple.

It came into her head that she would climb on to the top of the gate-she was as active as any young girl-and eat her apple there. Scarcely was she seated when she heard a soft tread through the grass, and knew some one was standing behind her at the gate. Without being much startled she looked quickly down, and her eyes fell on the upturned sunburnt face of the orchardman' and his patch of short white beard.

'Where be they gone to?' he asked, as her eyes met his. 'Oh! they met some young men they knew who offered to row them down the river.'

'And left you all alone?'

'Well, you see, I didn't know the young men very well, and

the girls are younger than me, and, as there was only room for two, naturally—ʼ

'It doesn't say

'I see,' he interrupted her quite angrily. much for their tastes'—he pronounced it 'tastés'—' if it had been me who had to choose, it isn't you would have been left on the bank.'

She blushed-an autumn blush. He thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. But you must be tired,' he said, by way of recovering himself. 'Come over to my cottage yonder; I've a niece there who'll make you a cup of tea. I'd like you to see my home.'

She declined, not from mistrust-to mistrust him would have shown more ignorance than was hers-but from shyness. He looked, as he felt, disappointed.

'Then I shall never see you again.'

'Never's a long day,' she laughed, and her laugh he thought was as sweet as her blush.

'May I walk a little way with you?' he asked.

'I was going back through the orchard,' she answered, 'and it's your orchard I take it.'

'Oh! I wouldn't intrude.'

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'No intrusion,' she said quietly. She liked this noble-looking Countryman with his patch of white beard. He might have stood for the last of the yeomen who once destroyed can never be supplied,' but whom there have been recent attempts to re-create as if they could be ordered by the gross from the manufacturer.

She had descended on the far side of the gate by this; he opened it for her, and they walked together under the fruit trees. He picked an apple here and there in passing. But the apple trade's not much good now,' he lamented; the early sorts are beaten by the French-which sounds droll-and the "keepers" are knocked out by the Australians.' He briefly enumerated the special virtues of each apple-she had not before known that she cared for such knowledge-before putting it away with the others in his handkerchief. He appeared to be of opinion that all apples -perhaps he would have said all men, too-have some good qualities if only people would take the trouble to look for them. When they arrived at the roads that bounded one side of his territory there was quite a large bundle of apples. Between whiles they discoursed of various matters; she of the town in which was her work; he of his little farm, which had been in the family for

more generations than he could tell-always coming back to apples again.

'Dull!' he exclaimed in answer to her question, 'how would it be dull? I've the farm to see to by day, and in the evenings I've my books. I've quite a lot of books, mostly old; none of your new-fangled novels. Some of my books are about farming, and some about things I don't rightly understand--poetry, and such like. But every now and again, even in books that don't; have nothing to do with farming'-he looked round at her slyly -- there comes in something about apples. From the beginning of Genesis there has always been quite a to-do about them; and. some would have it that apples are for ever making mischief; but that I don't hold by.'

'None of us, I suppose,' he went on after a brief pause, had any ambition---he looked keenly at her to see if she despised him for his lack of it. Now you wouldn't like to live here always?'

'I haven't thought about it,' she replied, blushing again.

He was handing her the bundle of apples which he had carefully tied up in the red handkerchief.

I could wish,' he said, that I might one day see you again.' 'I should like it too,' and she held out her disengaged hand. He held it for a second or two, and then dropped it without a word.

As she took her way down the hill he stood at his gate looking after her. She was almost out of sight, when she turned roundit was what he had been waiting for-and waved her hand. A shaft of sunlight shot in between the trees that fringed the road, and lit up the red handkerchief. Then she passed out of his sight, and he turned homewards with a smile on his face.

'I shall see her again,' he was thinking.

JOHN A. BRIDGES.

97

BELLA'S MR. BORWICK.

Ah, sweet! I wonder do you know
How lone and cold, how sad and drear,
Was I a little while ago;

Sick of the stress, the strife, the stir;

But I have found you, Christopher.-AMY LEVY.

THE winter sun had already contrived to force its way through the venetians into the room where Bella still lay in bed. She had been awake hours before the first peep of light, which, as it grew, revealed the healthy upturned face on the pillow, with the wide-open eyes and the look of terror in them. birthday. She was twenty-nine years old, and interesting had ever happened to her since she second prize for history at the High School, in the days before she was 'out.'

To-day was her nothing really had taken that

All through these early morning hours she had been going over the story of her grown-up life-a dimly coloured thing enough, whose hues were destined to grow yet more feeble as the story went on through the years, and the colours of her own flesh faded. God had given her but one life, and it was to be played in a crescendo movement of dullness. Could she endure to live through the many long days which would probably fall to her share, and of which the last must necessarily be worse than the first?

She had recalled her last day at the High School: the little regret with which she had said 'Good-bye' to her school-life, in her eagerness to play her part in the real grown-up world. Then there was the trying on of the first ball-dress for the subscription dance at the Croydon Town-hall; her own inward misgivings at the sight of the lank, bedecked figure in the pierglass; her mother's loving, trembling fussiness about the set of the skirt and the fit of the sleeve; then the dressing for the ball itself, with an audience of critical young cousins from over the way. I don't mean to have elbow-sleeves and a V-cut bodice, and my hair frizzed up like a fright, when I go to parties,' she overheard one pigtailed miss whisper as, ready at last, she passed through the street-door, down the steps, to the hired brougham,

VOL. III.—NO. 13, N.S.

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