this morning, with the leaf turned down at the Hymn to Night, and huge black dashes and underlinings, to indicate, I suppose, the intensity of his feelings. Poor young gentleman! Well, if I don't mistake, I shall see him again before long, meandering through the Marbrook streets; meandering not alone.

It is astonishing the gossiping sort of feeling one gets, through living in a house like this. If anybody had told me two months ago, that I should have cared to manifest the slightest interest in Miss Phoebe Sharrup's matrimonial speculations, or indeed those of anybody else, I should have said the thing was simply impossible. I used to have such a profound contempt for all that sort of thing. And yet here have I filled page after page of my journal with these same speculations, and enjoyed doing it too. Isabella Ponde and her mother are going home next week, unless the young lady gets her own way and stays another month. `The collegians too have drifted off to the South cliff, complaining that the North shore was too dull for them. The Misses Scram

ble are off to the Continent. New people come

one by one, but we do not draw to them, nor they to us. Papa and Mr. Lowe, Mrs. Tresilis and I, have it all to ourselves, and the others come and go as they like.

We have been here more than a month, and shall stop ten days longer. When I look back upon it, what a long time it seems! Weeks and weeks have gone since papa and I took our first walk on the sands that Wednesday morning, and I listened for the first time to the ocean sound which is so familiar to me now. And how far back, how very far back, that evening seems when Maud and I sat talking under the beech tree while Stephen Roden gathered the bright-veined leaves and wound them in her hair. Just before we came here it was, and yet it looks so long ago. I felt discontented that evening, I remember. I don't feel so now. I have a sort of quiet resting, and sense of coming peace. I don't know why it should be so, for nothing particular has happened; perhaps it is that I am learning to think less of myself, and to feel more interest in others. I rather think, though, I got a sort of insight into what it was that had made

ny scies thoughts, let me take ʼn home a ny heart and ponder upon i

H:w Serent everything seems ince Ms. Lewe came! Not that he takes my actice of me, fr we rarely speak to each other, but there is a something about him which binds us a gether, and makes us feel at peace. I think he is a very kind man, although he appears so grave and stern sometimes. I judge this from lindle things I have seen in him. We were walking down Newbero" the other day, and there was a little girl trying in vain to reach the knocker of a door. of people passed and repassed, but no one ofered to help her. One great puppyish, moustached fellow drawled out, "I'll help you for a kiss, pretty one;" another said, "Try again, little miss;" others laughed and went on. Mr. Lowe crossed over the road through the wet and dirt to reach the knocker for her, and she gave him such a bright smile. That same morning he stopped ever so

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long, when we got out on the Falsgrave road, to help a poor old man who was trying to get a sack of potatoes into his donkey-cart. I have found out, too, that every day when he passes poor old Mrs. Scott's cottage he unfastens her shutters for her, to save her the trouble of hobbling out and doing it herself, as she is so rheumatic. There are not many people who would think of doing such a kindness as that.

I have a pleasant sort of feeling come over me as I sit here by my little room window, where I have sat before so restless and discontented. Life is better worth having, after all, than I thought it was. There is Isabella Ponde's laugh again. How that girl vexes me sometimes, even when I am in the best of tempers! That night when we three came in from our long silent walk on the cliff, she was singing that common popular tune that one hears from all the barrel-organs and German bands from morning to night: she changed the last line, and sung as we entered the room,

"Oh, Philip, we have missed you."

I could have swept her off the stool, or thrown a

pail of cold water over her. Mr. Lowe took no notice, but walked quietly to his seat by the fireplace. I learn more and more to think that silence and retirement are the most admirable features of a woman's character. I believe he thinks so too.

But what was I intending to write about when I came up here? Not all this certainly, about Isabella Ponde and her doings. It was about our walk on the sands yesterday morning.

I had long intended to go and gather sea-weed on the rocks at low water, but the tide never served until yesterday, when papa and I, and Mr. Lowe and Mrs. Tresilis, set off. We went to that long range of low, brown, rugged rocks that stretches away to Scalby on the north shore. We did not keep long together, though. It gave papa a pain in his shoulder to stoop down, and Mrs. Tresilis got tired of the monotony of the thing; so they two went off to finish their walk on the sands, while Mr. Lowe and I stayed.

It was a very quiet sea. The tide was going out, leaving a wider and wider extent of rough, brown, slippery, seaweed-covered rocks, with clear