L

GRANNIE'S DREAM.

THE large parish of Lettergul was in a state of pleasurable excitement one evening last October, for their new rector, the Rev. Ernest Travers, was expected at the Glebe, and the people had lain at the mercy of one of those gentlemen popularly termed "Gladstone curates" for three months previously.

Said curate had not done very much to earn his one hundred and twenty pounds per annum, paid him by the Church Commissioners out of the spoils of the Irish Church: at least so thought the parishioners, who had been accustomed to the unflagging energy of their good old rector, a man who was wont to work as hard on week days as on Sundays.

The dreary interregnum of three months, during which the parish nominators could not be induced to decide upon the merits of the various candidates for Lettergul, was drawing to a close.

The nominators had submitted to a little pressure from the diocesan council, just in time to prevent the appointment lapsing into the hands of the bishop. The rector was chosen, and was about to gather the reins of government into his strong hands.

Young Mrs. Travers was at the Glebe-house making the last arrangements, while her husband, who had been there for two days, helping her to put up beds and lay carpets, was gone to fetch his grandmother and little son.

Nora Travers was a very capable young woman. By dint of hard work, to which she was not afraid to put her own hands, and clever contrivances, she was able to make twenty pounds go as far as most other people can make fifty. Her latest contrivance filled her with admiration of her native talent, and she could not resist calling Davy Byrne up from the yard, where he was employed in whitewashing the cow-house, that he might compliment her.

Davy and his wife were her grandmother's old servants. They had been in the service long before Nora's birth, and were regarded by her almost in the light of relations.

Both had strong wills of their own, which she rarely attempted to cross, and fixed ideas, to which neither she nor the rector ventured to run counter; and, truth to tell, they had done the greater part of the arranging and directing, while the young couple had worked under them.

But Nora sometimes did pluck up courage enough to assert herself. She and Davy had nearly quarrelled that very morning. The old man declared that his mistress should have the large room

above stairs for her bedroom, while Nora appropriated to her one on the ground floor, and no persuasion or grumbling on his part could induce her to change. He had set his affections upon the blue room, and told Nora he should never have taken such pains in laying the carpet and getting the room ready if he had not intended it for Mrs. Kennedy.

Nora, much provoked, yet kept her temper, and explained her reasons for giving his mistress the lower room.

But though firm in this instance, she yielded to his tyranny in a hundred minor things during the rest of the day, and was so desirous of conciliating him, that she must needs have him agree with Mary in sanctioning her clever contrivance.

"Call Davy up here for a moment, Mary," said she, pressing shapely hands, too useful to be very white, upon her glowing cheeks.

"I'm afeared he couldna get coming, dear, he's that throng at the present time.”

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Oh, nonsense, Mary; I shall not keep him a minute."

"An' I maun be making the supper. Sure the mistress an' his reverence 'ill be here in no time," persisted the tiresome old handmaiden, with wrinkled brow just puckering into a frown.

"Never mind, then, Mary. I'll call him myself." And the young housekeeper ran to the open stair window and called, "Davy, Davy, come up to the second landing. I want to speak

to you.

Some minutes elapsed before the old man was heard stumping slowly up-stairs, giving a little discontented cough now and then by way of marking his sense of the impropriety Nora was committing in calling him from his work.

He paused at the bedroom door-a spare figure, surmounted by a long sour face, which looked very honest and very ill-tempered —and said, gravely:

"What is it, ma'am?"

"I wanted to show you what I required the empty barrels for, Davy," replied she, pointing timidly to a row of very stylishlooking round dressing-tables, draped to the floor in folds of pink calico and white muslin. "You see," proceeded she, raising the drapery, and showing the rough wood underneath, "nobody could possibly guess what the table is made of, and it is large enough to hold a small looking-glass, a brush, a pin-cushion, and a vase of flowers."

"It's no just that ugly," said the old man, damning her with faint praise, "but if you tak' my bidding, you'll no' put a mak'shift like thon in the mistress's room. She was bred up to ha' gude, handsome things about her."

"But I have no other table for the room, Davy. I am as anxious to make dear grannie comfortable as you can be, and if she does not like the makeshift, you shall go to A- to-morrow and buy her a new table."

"Dear knows but this is a barrack o' a place, ma'am. Mary an' me stranges vera much that you an' his reverence wad bring the mistress till it, frae the wee spot she was used to."

"She wished to come, Davy. She made Mr. Travers apply for the parish, and we shall soon have it metamorphosed into a nice, cheerful home-the home of love and hope," murmured she, very softly, as she moved away to the window, with a light in her eyes and a tender smile upon her red lips.

The Glebe at Lettergul was in no wise remarkable. A large, square house, wherein one family after another had lived, and enjoyed, and suffered; good airy rooms, where many births and many deaths had taken place; a garden famed for its gooseberries; a gaunt shrubbery whose old laurels were something like foresttrees, where generation after generation of children had played at hide and seek in delightful untidiness, and immunity from visitors of the higher class; and a dark avenue which successive rectors had paced while engaged in composing sermons, or listening to the long-winded stories of their poor parishioners.

Beyond the dark avenue lay miles of bog, with little thatched cabins every here and there, and then arose a chain of rugged hills, which, however, were only to be caught sight of from the upper windows of the Glebe-house.

But these triste outward surroundings did not depress Nora Travers. The hope and love of which we have already spoken hovered over the whole landscape like beautiful angels with soft, white wings.

She intended to be happier than any rectoress who had ever before lived at the Glebe.

The room she visited oftenest and decorated with most care was the old breakfast parlour on the ground floor.

She and the two servants met there as soon as they heard the rumble of wheels, to give some last touches, and see that all was in order for Mrs. Kennedy's arrival.

The best carpet, the softest bed, and the easiest chair were assembled in her room; for not only did Nora love her grandmother for the tender care shown her since her childish days, but she felt she owed her the husband who made her so happy.

Had not Mrs. Kennedy smiled upon their love affair, and shared her worldly wealth with the clever young curate who had no hope of rising to affluence in the changed circumstances of the Irish Church? This unworldly generosity on the old lady's part

had caused her to be laughed to scorn by her neighbours, but the gratitude and devotion of her grand-children made up to her for

that.

There was an old-fashioned chandelier hanging from the ceiling in grannie's room. Nora had been guilty of the extravagance of filling it with candles, which she flew to light with a taper tied to a long stick, the moment she heard the carriage wheels crunching the gravel before the door.

"Fly, Mary, and open the hall-door," cried she, "while I finish lighting this. I want her first impressions to be good: she must have a bright, cosy welcome."

She had finished, and was in the hall to receive the procession. First came grannie-a tiny, slender old lady with brilliant dark eyes, delicate features, and snowy curls peeping under her large bonnet, a relic of former days. She leaned pretty heavily upon her grandson's arm, and walked slowly, because she suffered from

asthma.

Next came Mary, who had caught little Ernest from his maid, and was tottering along the passage, hugging him to her breast, and calling him all manner of "jewels and pigeons;" and the rear was brought up by Davy, laden with luggage, and grinning with satisfaction at his dear mistress's arrival.

"Come in here, grannie," said Nora, taking the old lady's other arm, and leading her towards the open door whence poured forth a flood of light "this is your own room. See, you have not far to go-no mounting of stairs to trouble you. Are you very tired? Has Ernest taken good care of you?"

"Yes, indeed, my love, he has been as kind and careful as you could have been," replied Mrs. Kennedy, in a soft, clear voice, refined like her face.

She let them conduct her to the arm-chair, and sat down, looking round her slowly and intently while she acknowledged all the tender greetings she had received.

"My sweet Nora you are so busy for me that you have not yet kissed your boy. How hard you must have worked, and my good Mary and Davy too! You have all had three days hard work."

"It's a wild place for the like of you, ma'am," put in Davy. "If Miss Nora there had ha' took my bidding, you'd ha' been put in a betther room

"Hush, Davy.

The house seemed a fine, large one, as well as I could make out in the dusk, and I never in my life had a bedroom like this. You and I are both very well off in our old

days."

She turned to Nora with a smile, and said in a low tone: "He tries you, dear, I am sure, with his objections and torment

ing ways, and you have no long lifetime of memories, as I have, to

make you put up with him."

"Oh, grannie, we got on charmingly," said Nora, with an answering smile; "we have only had one difference of opinion, and that was about this room."

"This room? By the way, dear, what made you give me this room?" asked Mrs. Kennedy, after another close and leisurely survey.

"On account of your asthma, grannie: you know it sometimes tried you greatly to climb up to your room at the cottage. Here you have merely to step across the passage from the drawingroom."

"But this must have been a drawing-room at one time-the chandelier

"I believe the Humphries' used it as a breakfast parlour; and I lit up the chandelier by way of welcome-I am so dearly fond of light. Davy calls the house a barrack, and Mary says it's like a gaol," continued Nora, unpinning Mrs. Kennedy's shawl, and taking off her bonnet; "but I admire and approve of everything: I like to feel myself mistress of so many spacious apartments."

"A cheerful, contented spirit, my Nora, will always make your home a palace," said the old lady; but she spoke dreamily, as though not quite knowing what she was saying, and all the while her eyes kept roving about the room with a look of surprise, not unmixed with awe.

"Tell me," said she at length, "have I ever been here before?" "Never," replied Mr. and Mrs. Travers, staring—" at least not within our memory."

"Nor within my own, and I have a good memory for all the events of my eighty years. I was never here before, yet this room is perfectly familiar to me. I know that brass chandelier, that tall chimney-piece, and that curious, round dressing-table, as well as I know my gold-headed cane that I have walked with for many a day."

"You never saw the dressing-table before, grannie; of that I am quite certain! It is the production of my powerful, unassisted genius," cried Nora, laughing in the glee of her heart.

Mrs. Kennedy was not her genial, lively self that evening. She seemed to listen with an effort to what the young people were saying, and continued rather grave and silent during tea. They attributed it to her fatigue, and having prevailed upon her to retire early, both accompanied her to the room where the candles were still blazing.

"I fear you don't quite like this room, dear grannie? Only say so, and we shall give you another," said her grand-daughter.