"We had not the slightest idea, and I cannot see it yet, that there was the least danger, or that there could be a mistake when none of us, neither bride nor bride

much Iris's shrinking delicacy and the prejudices of her education recoiled from bestowing the confidence, there might well be worse confidants and counsellors than peasant-bred Jeannie, with her per-groom, nor the gentleman who consented fect candor, honest maidenliness, warm heart, and ready wit.

"It was as I said, Jeannie. Miss Dugdale, my cousin, proposed to act one of your runaway marriages, and went to dress as a runaway bride. But I did not like the play, and I liked it least of all for her, because she and one of the gentlemen the taller and fairer of the two are sweethearts, though she had never let him know that she cared for him; indeed, she had been teasing and vexing him all the morning."

Jeannie was intensely interested and appreciative. "Biting and scarting are Scotch folks wooin'," she said. "The young leddy maun hae a drap o' gude Scotch blude in her veins. There's mony a Maggie has 'cuist her head and looked fu' skeich' to begin wi'. But you mauna stand and wear yoursel' oot, when you may hae eneuch afore you." And Jeannie nimbly emptied out her basket, turned it over, and made Iris sit down upon it. It did not signify that Jeannie was in danger of losing the best of the morning for bleaching and "withering" her "claes." Such a cause the last grand marriage that was ever likely to be enacted in the inn, about which there might be trouble in time to come - even the mistress must allow, justified the wasted sunshine.

"It was not the man she liked in that way she had arranged should be the mock bridegroom." Iris struggled gallantly to tell the story.

"Na, I could guess that," commented Jeannie from her own experience and maidenly instinct.

"Mr. Acton - her real lover, I mean was much hurt, and as he had to go off last night to see his family and join his ship he is a sailor there would have been no time for a reconciliation, and I fancied the thoughtless offence might have parted the two forever."

to say the words which you use in your marriage ceremony, meant anything by it."

-you

"It was the old lady Lady Fermor, who is grandmother both to me and Miss Dugdale, that did it, and this is the painful part of the story," confessed Iris with furious blushes. "She has a great friendship for -for Sir William Thwaite know his name already. She wished greatly that there should be a marriage between-between him and either of her granddaughters first one and then the other, but she has not been able to bring it about. I suppose, but I cannot tell, that she suddenly thought when the temptation met her, for I cannot believe she brought us all this distance to lead us into a snare," cried Iris, wringing her hands, "she would make the jest look like earnest, deceive Sir William and frighten Miss Dugdale and me into imagining there was nothing left for us but to be married truly."

"Oh, the auld bizzum! forgive me, mem, since she is your granny, but it is a sair pity when the auld, who suld be thinking o' a better place, hae neither conscience nor mercy, and are fit to sacrifice their bairns and their bairns' bairns if it will but compass some worldly plan of their ain. But what for did the other young leddy forsake you when you had done her sic a service?"

"I cannot tell, Jeannie," said Iris sadly. "But I think Lady Fermor and her maid must have misled my cousin up to the last moment and then forced her away. If so, she will never rest till she finds me

"For certain," chimed in Jeannie decisively. "If the chield had ony spunk. Eh! but she maun hae been a wilfu' heed-out, I can trust her for that." less lassie."

"You'll no think me impident, mem," said Jeannie gravely, "gin I say I canna a'thegither comprehend, though I dinna misdoobt your word. But I maun hae a' the airts and pairts o' the story to gie to them that may help you. There were letters left for you -one o' them directed to Leddy Thwaite, you opened baith, as

gin you were free to do't more by token, | lent Miss Dugdale part of my last quarthe gentleman sent you money for your ter's allowance, and I had not got the money for the next quarter I was nearly penniless."

use.

It was unmistakable that Jeannie, though genuinely indignant on Iris's account because of what the young lady had told the girl, still clung with a certain faith to the marriage, partly because of the perplexing contradictions she had alluded to, partly from a natural reluctance to find that her first, and it might be her last, example of a real grand runaway marriage was likely to end in smoke. Iris sat aghast at these fresh complications. Were the meshes of the net closing round her? But she would strive to the last to break through them.

"The letter addressed to Lady Thwaite was in my grandmother's handwriting. I knew the handwriting and looked no far ther. I never doubted it was written to me."

"The heartless, hard-fisted auld sorry," cried Jeannie, unable to restrain herself or even to offer an apology for her free. dom of speech. "Even a servant lass like me, gin she be wise, has maistly a pund or twa in the savings bank, or a couple o' croons in her kist to fa' back upon. But you puir young leddies, who mustna mint at working for your ain hands, are often as helpless as bairns, and mair hardly dealt wi' by evil paurents. Weel, mem, I hae you noo. I can follow your tale, though as sure's death it's gey daft-like, still it's within the boonds o' possibility, and it's no aye the daftest lass that gits into trouble. For my pairt I be lieve you ilka word, and sae micht jurymen and judge, if it were iver to get into "It was a thoosand pities you tore open a coort, though the auld leddy and her the envelope, for a written word gangs far maid were to take fause aiths as you in law. It makes nae odds what you did may swear the t' ain wouldna stick at, wi't, though you hae burnt it to aes, for a and though the direction o' the letter and dizzen folk could swear to the direction, the money and a' were brocht in. But and you daured na deny you opened and losh! mem, it was playin' wi' fire to play read the letter." at a Border marriage, on the very spot, as "But it was not Sir William who ad-gin the spirit o' the place possessed you. dressed it," argued Iris with a faint blush, The mere word o't micht stick to you and "I could understand the name would be bleck you to your deein' day. What of moment then. Think, Jeannie, any-modest lass be she o' the laighest debody might write a letter to you calling gree, would care to gang into a coort and you by a name which the writer had no be speered and back-speered by snigger. right to give you, and you might open ing cunning blackguards o' lawyers, aboot the letter by mistake, but the unwarrant- sic a job? The bare word o' the scandal able name would signify nothing, could would stick to her." not implicate you."

"I have a letter from Sir William Thwaite, mentioning the marriage as a frolic and addressed to me as Miss Compton. Will that letter not contradict the other?"

"Weel, it suld do something," granted cautious Jeannie. "But what aboot the money for your use, mem?"

"He sent it to me as a loan, lest Lady Fermor should have gone away and left me without caring to ascertain whether I had enough in my purse to pay my rail way fare in following her, or in going back to my other friends in England. The precaution was justifiable," said Iris, flashing out in the middle of her patient humility, and holding up her fine little head in the old style. "We had many expenses when we were in town. I had

--

"But the story's far too absurd for a court - who would carry it there? not even Lady Fermor," pled Iris.

"You dinna ken," said Jeannie, who preferred to look at all sides of a question, and rather inclined to take the dark side, "one can never tell how bools will row or what ferlies may come to pass. It micht be a score or fifty years hence, when maist who could hae telled the truth were gane, gin you had married and had bairns, and ony money were to be left to them, or to yoursel', and there were ither claimants for the siller who heard a sough lingering here o' what happened last nicht, heth! it micht cost your lads and lasses their birthricht and cast shame on their mither in her grave."

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'Oh, Jeannie, don't be a prophet of evil," implored Iris; "and surely there is no need to look so far forward."

'Deed, that is just what there is need o', and a far outlook is a grand thing. Could you no mak' it up among your.

a moment. What time he spared from his work he spent with his friends, or in being rowed on the river by his waterman, or painting, or rambling through the lanes on foot or on horseback with his dog Bounce, decorating his grotto-the sub

ginning of my translating the Iliad," as he told Spence, "I wished anybody would hang me, a hundred times." Want of money may also have combined with Pope's large acquaintance and keen interest in social events to induce the family to leave Windsor Forest. In 1716 Bin-terranean passage that Swift called his field was sold, and the Popes moved to Mawson's New Buildings, "to the waterside at Chiswick, under the wing of Lord Burlington" (Pope to Caryll, April 20, 1716). There his father, two years later, died and was buried, and Pope and his mother moved to the villa at Twickenham.

"Ars Poetica," laying out his five acres
of land which he "twisted and twirled,
and rhymed and harmonized, into two or
three sweet little lawns; or in the "ten-
der office ”—and the hours so spent were
the best and purest of his life
To rock the cradle of reposing age,
With lenient acts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smoothe the bed of
death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.

His life may be gathered from his correspondence. At the call of Homer he bade "farewell to London," exchanging "luxurious lobster nights for studious days." He exaggerates his dissipations like a man to whom boon companionship is not familiar. Health so frail could not Constitution and habit made him restendure excess, when "two bites and a sup" beyond his "stint" cost him more than others paid for a debauch. Even in the days when he possessed

The sprightly wit, the lively eye,
The engaging smile, the gaiety,
That laughed down many a summer sun,

Few public events took place at which he was not present, "as sure to be there in a bustle as a porpoise in a storm."

less. He rides to Bath, stopping at houses on the way; journeys to Oxford to stay at Magdalen, or visit Clarke at All Souls, or Spence, who was professor of poetry; or spends weeks at the "lone house at Stanton Harcourt. He is to be heard of as a guest of Bathurst at Cirencester, of Oxford at Downhall or Wimhe never habitually haunted tavern com- pole, of Bolingbroke at Dawley, of Peterpany. It was exceptional for him to sit borough at Bevis Mount, at Ladyholt, up till "two o'clock over Burgundy and Grinstead, Whiteknights, Mapledurham Champagne," or to become "so much a the seats of his Catholic friends. Till modern rake as to be ashamed of busi- his exile in 1823, Atterbury was a freness." Such freaks were rare, although quent host. He pays visits to the Blounts he was "the gayest valetudinaire in Bolton Street, to Gay at his lodgings at most thinking rake alive;" had they been Whitehall, to Arbuthnot at his apartments the rule of his life, they would not be men-in St. James's Palace or Dover Street. tioned in his letters. An old man before he was forty, he could not rise and dress himself without aid. He was laced up right in a stiff canvas boddice, his legs encased in three pairs of stockings; he shivered with cold even with a fur doublet next to his skin. If it is considered how "" crazy was his form, how he suffered from asthma and dropsy, was threatened with cataract, tortured with rheumatism, racked with constant headaches which he vainly strove to alleviate by coffee; how he was sleepless for nights together, only dozing by day after dinner, or over the fire like the picture of January in a Salisbury primer," or when the Prince of Wales conversed with him on poetry, it is marvellous that he was so seldom querulous. His brain was always busy; but, without economy of painless intervals, he could never have accomplished what he did. The scraps of paper and backs of letters on which he wrote his poetry show that "paper-sparing Pope" rarely wasted

66

Round Pope gathered a brilliant circle whose names are "familiar in our mouths as household words." Besides the Scriblerus Club-consisting of Arbuthnot, Gay, Atterbury, Parnell, and himself, with Swift as president were Garth, Steele, Prior, Congreve, Rowe. Oxford, Bolingbroke, Peterborough, Murray, Berkeley, Jervas, Kneller, were his associates. At Twickenham he was close to the royal palaces, and the young court held at Richmond by the Prince and Princess of Wales, afterwards George II. and Queen Caroline. The atmosphere of the latter was freethinking, for the princess was an esprit fort, a patroness of Tindal, Toland, and Collins; it was also in factious opposition to the king and the ministry. Among the courtiers were Mrs. Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk, whose grounds at Marble Villa Pope assisted to plan,

Miss Bellenden, Miss Lepel, Chesterfield, | Pope joined in the war, and attacked HerBathurst, Scarborough, Hervey. Pope vey as Lady Fanny, and Lady Mary in was in his element; he and his friends as the outrageous lines on Sappho. Their Tories supported the heir-apparent, the joint retort, the verses to the "Imitator of atmosphere of free thought was congenial, Horace," taunts him with the obscurity of the maids of honor to whom he was his birth, ridicules his poetry and appearTuneful Alexis on the Thames' fair side, ance, and thus concludes: The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride ·