The clock on the chimney-piece struck, and she turned her head to look at it. "That's five minutes slow," she said.

"And the other was more than ten minutes fast."

"I was afraid I might be," he replied. "A clock struck before I expected it. I suppose my watch loses, but I hadn't found it out."

"Oh, I ought to have told you," she exclaimed penitently. "That is the great clock in the hall, and it is always kept ten minutes fast. Uncle likes it for a warning. So when it strikes, he says, 'That's the hall clock; then there's plenty of time, plenty of time, I'll just finish this.' And he goes on quite happily."

"I fancied somehow that Mr. Hayes was a very punctual man."

"Because he talks so much about it. I think he reminds other people for fear they should remind him. When I first came he was always saying, 'Don't be late,' till I was quite frightened lest I should be. I couldn't believe it when he said, 'Don't be late,' and then wasn't ready."

"You are not so particular now?" "Oh yes, I am," she answered very seriously. "It doesn't do to be late if you are the housekeeper, you know."

A faint gleam lighted Harding's face. "Of course not; but I never was," he replied, in a respectful tone. "How long is it since you came here?"

"I came with my mother to see uncle a great many years ago, but I only came to live here last October. Uncle wanted somebody. He said it was dull."

"I should think it was. Isn't it dull for you?"

"Sometimes," said Barbara. "It isn't at all like home. That's a little house with a great many people in it-father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters, and father's pupils. And this is a big house with nobody in it."

"Till you came," said Reynold, hesitating over the little bow or glance which should have pointed his words.

"Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with a smile, "he must count for some body. But I feel exactly like nobody when I am going in and out of all those empty rooms. You must see them tomorrow."

away into the future and I have to stop it, to let the world come up with it again, it seems to me almost as if I stopped my own life too."

"Some people would be uncommonly glad to do that," said Harding; to make time go backward for a while." Well, I don't mind for a quarter of an hour. But I don't want it to go back, really. Not back to pinafores and the schoolroom," said Barbara with a laugh, which in some curious fashion turned to a deepening flush. The swift, impulsive blood was always coming and going at a thought, a fancy, a mere nothing.

"I

Harding smiled in his grim way. suppose it's just as well not to want time to run back," he said at last.

"Uncle might find himself punctual for once if it did. Oh, here he comes!" The door opened as she spoke, and Mr. Hayes appeared on the threshold with an inquiring face.

"Ah! you are down, Barbara! That's right. Dinner's ready, they tell me."

Reynold looked at Barbara, hesitated, and then offered his arm. Mr. Hayes stood back and eyed them as they passed - the tall young man, pale, dark-browed, scowling a little, and the girl at his side radiantly conscious of her dignity. Even when they had gone by he was obliged to wait a moment. The sweeping folds of Barbara's dress demanded space and respect. His glance ran up them to her shoulders, to the amber beads about her neck, to the loose coils of her dusky hair, and he followed meekly with a whimsical smile.

They dined in the great dining-room, where a score of guests would have seemed few. But they had a little table, with four candles on it, set near a clear fire, and shut in by an overshadowing screen. "We are driven out of this in the depth of winter," said Mr. Hayes. "It is too cold nothing seems to warm it, and it is such a terrible journey from the drawing-room fire. But till the bitter weather comes I like it, and I always come back as soon as the spring begins. We were here by March, weren't we, Barbara?"

The girl smiled assent, and Harding had a passing fancy of the windy skies of

"Some pride can't be carried about, I suppose," he said at last. "It's as bad as a whole gallery of family portraitsworse, for you cannot raise money on it." Mr. Hayes nodded. "I see. Rooted in the Mitchelhurst soil, you think? Very possibly." He looked round, as far as the screen permitted. "And so, when this went, all went. But how very sad!" The young man did not take the trouble to express his agreement a second time. "And your other uncle," said Mr. Hayes briskly, after a pause. "How is

he?"

"More so," said Harding in his rough voice. "His money gathers and grows like a snowball. But he is beginning to think about enjoying it — he is evidently growing old. He says it is time for him to have a holiday. He never took one for some wonderful time - eighteen years I think it was; but he has not worked quite so hard of late."

"Well, he deserves a little pleasure now."

"I don't know about that. If a man makes himself a slave to money-getting I don't see that he deserves any pleasure. He deserves his money."

The old gentleman laughed. "Let the poor fellow amuse himself a little if he can. The question is whether he can, after a life of hard work. What is his idea of pleasure?

66

Yachting. He discovered quite lately that he wasn't sea-sick; he hadn't leisure to find it out before. So he took to yachting. He can enjoy his dinner as well on board a boat as anywhere else, he can talk about his yacht, and he can spend any amount of money."

"You haven't any sympathy with his hobby?"

"I? I've no money to spend, and I am sea-sick."

"You are? I remember now," said

Mr. Hayes thoughtfully, "that your grandfather and John Rothwell had a great dislike to the water."

"Ah? It's a family peculiarity? A proud distinction?" Harding laughed quietly, looking away. He was accustomed to laugh at himself and by himself. "It's something to be able to invoke the

qualms," he said.

Mr. Hayes smiled a little unwillingly. He did not really require respect for the Rothwell seasickness, but it hardly pleased him that the young fellow should scoff at his ancestry, just when it had gained him admission to Mitchelhurst Place. "Bad taste," he said to himself, and he returned abruptly to the money. making uncle. "I suppose Mr. Harding has a son to come after him?"

"Yes, there's one son," Reynold replied, with a contemptuous intonation.

"And does he take to the business?" "I don't know much about that. I fancy he wants to begin at the yachting end, anyhow."

66

Only one son." Mr. Hayes glanced at young Harding as if a question were on his lips; but the other's face did not invite it, and the subject dropped. There was a pause, and then the elder man began to talk of some Roman remains which had been discovered five miles from Mitchelhurst. Reynold crossed his long legs, balanced himself idly, and listened with dreary acquiescence.

It was some time before the Roman remains were disposed of and they rejoined Barbara. They startled her out of her uncle's big easy-chair, where she was half-lying, half-sitting, with all her black draperies about her, too much absorbed in a novel to hear their approach. Harding, on the threshold, caught a glimpse of the nestling attitude, the parted lips, the hand that propped her head, before Miss Strange was on her feet and ready for her company.

Mr. Hayes, stirring his coffee, demanded music. He liked it a little for its own sake, but more just then because it would take his companion off his hands. He was tired of entertaining this silent young man, who stood, cup in hand, on the rug, frowning at the portraits of his forefathers, and he sent Barbara to the piano with the certainty that Harding would follow her. As soon as he saw them safely at the other end of the room he dropped with a sigh of relief into the chair which she had quitted, and took up his book.

she knew by heart, and he stood a little aside, with his moody face softening, and his downward-glancing eyes following her fingers over the keys, as if she were weaving the strands of some delicate tissue. When she stopped, rested one hand on the music-stool on which she sat, and turned from the piano to hear what her uncle wished for next, he saw, as she leaned backward, the pure curve of her averted cheek, and the black lace and amber beads about her softly rounded throat.

"Oh, I know that by heart, too!" she exclaimed.

He took up a sheet of music from the piano, and gazed vaguely at it while she struck the first notes. He read the title without heeding it, and then saw pencilled above it in a bold, but somewhat studied, hand,

"ADRIAN SCARLETT."

For a moment the name held his glance; and when he laid the paper down he looked furtively over his shoulder. He knew that it was an absurd fancy, but he felt as if some one had come into the room and was standing behind Barbara.

66

From The Cornhill Magazine. MY ARAB.

My Arab, though in a very prosaic way an object of interest, is by no means a morally grand or physically picturesque personage. A child, not of the everlasting desert, but of the ebbing and flowing gutter, and literally, as well as figura tively, a child. He speaks of himself as going on ten," and, as a guess, that is probably tolerably near the mark, though his mother professes to be uncertain whether it is ten or eleven years of age that he will be "next hopping." The hopping is her chief chronological landmark. She generally speaks of things as having occurred during or so long before or after the hopping, though occasionally she will fix a date by reference to the year in which " we - that is to say, her husband, self, and child "wintered in the house;" the house in this case meaning the workhouse. The boy is popularly known as "Slinger," a cognomen about the origin of which, as about his age, there is a degree of uncertainty. Some say it was bestowed upon him in consequence of his skill with the simple and easily made sling which serves boys of his class instead of the more elaborate

and costly catapult with which better-off boys do their window-breaking and attempt bird-slaughter. Others assert that the sobriquet is a tribute to his skill and dexterity in "slinging his hook," a phrase which, being interpreted, means getting out of the way if he individually, or the body of "small gangers 99 of which he is a leading spirit, have "been up to games." And certain it is that Slinger displays a marked aptitude for "getting round the corner" or doubling about the network of slums in which his home (?) is situated, if he has been "up" to anything which makes it desirable that he should keep himself dark.

His features are pinched, but tolerably regular; his expression of countenance "old-fashioned" and cunning; his complexion is naturally sallow, though in any case it would appear so, owing to the fact that it is habitually "grimed " with dirt. His hair is dark and curly, and worn uncombed and matted, and he has a pair of bright, black, beady eyes which are constantly "on the move." He is small and thin, but wiry, and active and hardy, and would probably look a fairly well-made boy could his figure be made out. With him, however, all outline of form is "lost" from his always being clad in cast-off garments "a world too wide," and as regards trouser-leg and coat-sleeve a world too long, though the latter inconvenience is easily remedied by the rolling up process. Winter and summer alike he goes barefoot, and to a certain extent from choice. He could no doubt muster up old boots as he musters up other old clothing. As a matter of fact, he does occasionally get hold of a pair that have still some wear in them, and as far as appearance goes would be rather a credit than otherwise to the rest of his costume, but instead of wear. ing them he disposes of them in the way of sale or barter.

sense

Stockings are undreamed of in his philosophy of dress. New clothing of any kind, but particularly new boots, he takes it as a matter of course are not for him, and as a wearer of old clothes he is decidedly of opinion that there is - in what he would call an "over-the-left "" nothing like leather, nothing so bad, so great a mistake, as old boots. His objec tion to them is the practical, not to say painful one, that they, as he puts it, "raws yer feet." Not from their being too large-though the fact of their fitting too much" has a tendency to rawing but because the ridges worn in them never suit the "bend of the foot" of sec

the hollows ought to be, and then, as Slinger remarks, "there yer are, yer know, with the top of yer foot half rubbed off." If Slinger is to be taken as an authority and I believe he may be, while others have confirmed to me his testimony upon the point this fault in old boots extends even to "new secondhanders," as those boots are styled that have been mended and done up, or, in technical language, "translated " for the second-hand wardrobe trade. The "last ing" which they receive in the translating process may make them look unwrinkled, but when taken into wear the "real original" old ridges soon assert themselves again. It is commonly supposed that translated boots are chiefly sold among the poorest of the poor, but this is a mistaken notion. The principal market for them is among the struggling poor, the poor who strive to conceal their poverty, who have, or believe they have, an appearance to keep up, who cannot afford if they can possibly avoid it to be seen down at heel, and who would lose caste and be utterly ashamed were they compelled to be seen without boots at all. This, however, is by the way. Slinger elects to go barefoot, and gives a reason for the faith that is in him upon the point. Nor does he appear to suffer much from the practice, the more especially as from wear and weather the soles and for the matter of that the "uppers" too of his feet have hardened till they are almost like horn.

Slinger is no half-breed of his race. His parents before him were gutter-bred. They have not seen better days, have not come down in the world, are not, any more than the bulk of their neighbors, what they are owing to any sudden or unexpected turn in

The April sky of chance,

Or the strong tide of circumstance. Pretty much as Slinger is now was his father at the same age. On attaining to man's estate it seemed good to him to give himself brevet rank as a laborer, though in reality he is, merely and sheerly, a loafer. According to a convenient fic tion current among the loafing fraternity, he is always engaged, from early morn to dewy eve, searching for work and never finding it. Practically his being's end and aim, both by day and night, is to obtain as much drink as possible "on the cheap," and one way or another he manages to obtain a good deal. Though be

to

On these

rather than to the habitual-criminal class, he is "well known to the police." He has repeatedly "done time" for "drunks and disorderlies," and for assaults upon the police, public-house landlords and barmen, and members of the general public who may have been guilty of resenting his importunities to them to stand treat. He has also been several times convicted under the Education Acts, and might have been convicted many a time and oft for wife-beating could the wife have been induced to charge him, but she takes her beatings much as a matter of course, and won't charge. Mrs. Slinger-so name her for the nonce- is chiefly instrumental in keeping together what serves the family for home. In the winter she works when she can get work to do-in white-lead factories, or pickle factories, or in rag-sorting sheds or firewood yards. In the season the family go hopping, and occasionally fruit-gath ering and harvesting also. agricultural expeditions the mother and boy do the work, while the father constitutes himself contractor for and ganger over their labor, and sees to obtaining for himself his accustomed share (which is the lion's) of their earnings. The town residence of the family consists of a small back room containing, by way of furniture, an old and never-washed "tick " stuffed with straw or shavings, which serves as a bed, and a bundle of equally unwashed rags for bed-clothes, and a couple of chairs so shorn of their fair proportions of spars, and generally so battered and broken as to be unsalable even among the furniture brokers of a rookery quarter. If the room they occupy for the time being has a "sideboard" cupboard, they use the top of it as a table. If not, they can get along very well with out a table. Both husband and wife prefer malt liquors to such slops as they consider them as tea or coffee, and beer cans serve them sufficiently for such culinary operations as they indulge in.

As regards eatables, they live chiefly upon bread. If they want other food, and chance to be in a position to afford it, they get it ready-cooked, in the shape of the mysterious but cheap and savory sausage or saveloy, or the toothsome trotter. Even if they want a bit of something warm, they are still independent of home cookery. They can obtain hot "faggots," hot baked potatoes, hot fried fish, or a cut of pork with hot pease-pudding. The latter, however, is a dish to be thought of