laughter he set out for Mr. Skiffin's office.

Joanie looked after him with a philosophic expression. Young gentlemen, as Joanie knew them, were subject to these paroxysms. He reckoned that John, naturally phlegmatic, would be soon restored to calm, and he did not reckon wrong.

Perhaps a long morning walk, taken alone, is as good a sedative to passion as could be devised, and perhaps there is nothing more calculated to overcome pride and prejudice than the spectacle presented by a city at that hour at which the toilers set out on their march, and are vested with the dignity which clothes all pioneers. Be that as it may, John, as he footed it to Mr. Skiffin's office, fell to reflecting that a poor gentleman, who drove the quill as an attorney's clerk, and retained his selfrespect, might e'en make up a butcher's accounts and not forfeit that precious thing.

This was a notable reflection to be made on his walk by one John England in days by much anterior to those in which a certain Thomas Carlyle was to set forth that all work is noble.

Having remodelled an opinion on whatsoever subject, it was an easy thing to John, by reason of a gracious simplicity native to his character, to confess having done so; wherefore, he said without paltering, on his return home, that he had remodelled his opinion anent acting as accountant to Joanle's friend, the butcher, and was minded to accept the exchange proposed.

Thus it was that the way found by Joanie to feed certain hungry mouths was followed, and the pups of Sweetlips were not carried to market.

As time and training-and Joanie was a past master in training-worked their wonders, another scheme ripened in the brain of John's faithful servitor. Meanwhile time had been speeding.

XIII.

AFTER THREE YEARS.

Three years of the life as an attorney's clerk did not fail to work certain changes in John England-late young squire of Bucklands.

His face lost something of its ruddy color and round contour, and what had always been a strong resemblance between him and his father was heightened by a straightness of line in brow and lips which old age had brought to Jasper England, and which in John, at the age of six and twenty, was the result of a life devoted to uncongenial tasks, which were not rendered the easier of performance that the strained relations between him and the ladies of Bridlington became, with the lapse of years, not less strained, but more strained.

Penelope, who had not the gift of letter writing, wrote to John at intervals letters which entirely lacked the heartiness which characterized her speech a fact in part due to the circumstance that the letters were written by the girl under protest from her grandmother and guardian.

Mrs. Steptoe was of belief that John, with time, would come to agree with his father on the subject of marriage. She reckoned that he would miss in London many good things to which he had become accustomed at Bucklands, and that the first acquaintance which he would there make with privation would incline him to look more favorably upon an union, the other party to which would be a girl with a great fortune. She desired to see her favorite granddaughter married to the heir of Bucklands, for whom she had a strong affection, and she confidently counted on this marriage taking place when John should return to his duty. In the interim she discouraged Penelope from corresponding with the exile.

When three years passed, and John still showed no disposition to come to terms with his father, but gave it to be understood that he regarded Croydon as his home, Mrs. Steptoe was the less inclined to take a lenient view of his persistent opposition to parental wishes that Penelope, who was not to be induced to cease corresponding with him, presented the appearance of a lady most deject and wretched, whereas Alce, so far from moping, made herself the subject of large comment by developing a gaiety formerly foreign to her manner.

That Penelope's dejection, while very real, had no connection with John, and that Alce's gaiety, which had connection with John, was entirely assumed to hide pique that the man who had undergone exile for her had, by his own account, made himself a home which he showed no intention of asking her to share, nobody in the environment of these two ladies divined.

Certain persons, the while, made it their business to have it conveyed to John that the sweet gravity which he had admired in Alce no longer distinguished her, but that, contrariwise, she formed the foil to a sweetlygrave Penelope.

John, who was not in a prime degree interested in the psychological development of Penelope, but who was keenly interested in all that concerned Alce, pondered the change in the girl of his love, and interpreting it on lines unflattering to himself, found consolation, as he conceived, in other things.

Joanie also conceived that Mr. England, after having been subject off and on, through a period of three years, to acute fits of sentimental melancholy, at the end of the time found himself cured of love, and, unwilling alike to wed rich girl or poor girl, was minded to continue his unmolested life of a bachelor at Croydon.

Joanie had done what in him lay to make that life not wholly devoid of all

that had given zest to life at Bucklands, and he was still, at the end of three years, toiling with this aim in view.

It has been said that the house in Pound Street, which became the home of John England, on his taking up his abode in Croydon, was not rented by him. What the terms of Joanie's lease were has not transpired, but it has transpired that Joanie kept hounds in the garret of that house and a hunter in the cellar of it, facts which should supply valuable material to the student of municipal government as it was and is; for Pound Street, with its new name of George Street, still forms a part of Croydon town, and, doubtless, still offers home to various domestic animals; howbeit, such is the prejudice of modern landlords in favor of the livingout system for hounds and horses, that it is not to be believed that in the length and breadth of George Street, Croydon, of to-day there is a tenant who could, if he would, keep hounds in his garret and a hunter in his cellar as Joanie did, though the suspicion lies near that, had he been so minded, he could have negotiated for the lodging of his master's hunter and hounds in the yards and open spaces common at the time.

The fact that he did not do so finds the all of explanation that can be hazarded regarding it in three things. The penuriousness of Joanie, which caused him to discountenance the slightest outlay which could, by any contrivance, be avoided; the pride of John, who would not have accepted stabling and kennelling without paying for them; and the rough-and-ready, live-and-letlive spirit of the age, which made it possible for a gentleman to follow a course of action which in these days of vaunted freedom of the subject would evoke loud protest.

As events actually took their course, 1 Yes, "facts," incredulous reader, not fiction.

forth whether it was by special arrangement with the attorney in whose employ he was as clerk that John England contrived to go once or twice a week a-hunting, or whether in so doing he was availing himself of a privilege extended generally to clerks.

Howsoever that be, the fact is that John England combined the calling of

The Leisure Hour.

quill-driver and huntsman, and presented to the world a front so undismayed that, had not Parson about this time elected to ride to London on his hobby to take himself the bearings of his brother's case, the later course of the story of the rightful heir of Bucklands might have been less lovely and pleasant than it was.

Elsa D'Esterre-Keeling.

"Ferry, ye ho!" with a long-drawn accent on the last syllable of "Ferree" that makes the sound travel across the water. That's a golfer who wants his lunch, and, by the same token, I ought to want mine, too, but when I spend much time out of doors the fresh air feeds me.

I have been watching the river and all that belongs to it for the last two hours, and by the help of palette and sketch-box I have been making notes of an old black barge that has seen its last days of service on the water and now lies wearily on the sand, like some old sea monster tired of its life. When I began my notes the barge was high and dry, the delicately-colored sand lay in golden heaps around it on the sunny side, and a great cool shadow rested like silence on the leeward of the boat. The sand was everywhere, but for one little pool shaped like a half-moon, and this had been left by a former tide for the sky to look down into, for a stray shore crab to bathe in, and for me to make note of.

I had put the barge into my sketch, a blue-black note, I had touched it round with the sands, pale gold against black, I had thought of introducing the mill that stands across the water, with the

white walls of the coastguard's cottage close at hand, when there came a very light sound like a little laugh, something between a laugh and a whisper, and there was the incoming tide blotting out my golden sand and racing round my barge my barge, I had begun to know it and be attached to itand there was the hulk, that looked so solid and immovable, being slowly lifted up by the tide; the purple shadow in the sand was gone, and a grayish-yellow wash of water played about where the shadow had been, and my poor notes were in disorder. Hang the tide! "Ferree!"

By all means. I'll shut up my box and join the hungry golfer in his quest for lunch.

There is a little group of people waiting for the ferry-boat on the sloping shelf of a stone-path. Two middle-aged golfers in tweed suits, two ladies also middle-aged and spectacled, one youth with a fowling piece, an old muzzleloader. As the ferryman creeps near us with his boat, the middle-aged ladies interview the gunner, who, in addition to his gun, carries a dead bird, which he has just shot above the golf links near the sea. The bird is a little

ringed plover. Its leg is broken, and its white breast is stained with blood. I heard a couple of shots fired when I was making my sketch.

The

Now I know their meaning. young gunner is a little proud of his bag. He has achieved something this fine autumn morning in having brought down this poor little harmless wanderer of the sands and marshes. He has "shot a fine shoot." Well, but this incident of the ringed plover leads me to a subject which has given me some weeks of thought. Let us consider the bird for a moment. He has a black head with brown upper wings and back, but his neck, breast, and under parts are snowy white, with one dark band beneath his throat. Why has Nature made this arrangement in black and white? What is the meaning of the white breast and white underwings? Is the white to give the gunner a better aim? No; that would be too unkind. Is it there for the bird to use as a signal for his mate, to warn him against danger by sea or land?

Perhaps. Or may the white be a protection from cold and damp? The white can be used as a danger signal or a call to the bird's fellows, but I am much disposed to think that it can be looked upon as a protection against cold.

But why? Have we not always thought that white was associated with the comfort of coolness? A white waistcoat, a white shirt, to the sufferer from summer heat: are not these the justly-quoted and appropriate accessories? Are not dark clothes winter comforts for humanity? We all have cherished these beliefs for many years, and we may cherish them still without hurting anybody's feelings greatly, for there seems a sense of fitness in the white waistcoat for summer wear, and in the dark-dyed woollen coat for winter. But here creeps in the doubt. Why is it that the dwellers in the North

Pole, such as birds, foxes, bears, wear white clothes? Is the heat so oppressive in the Arctic regions that Nature supplies most of them with white waistcoats, and many of them with white overalls?

The eager scientist whispers in my ear, "Why, don't you know that it is for protection against their enemies, so that the color of their coats shall match their surroundings?"

Admitted that this is the case; but pray from whom does the polar bear seek to hide himself? Does he fear the fox, or seal, or bird of prey even? I think not; therefore we must not allow this argument to hold good in his case. Coming back to the plover's white breast, I have noted that nearly all the waders, and all the birds that migrate to the colder parts of the globe, have a covering of white, mystic, "wonderful," not always on the back and upper wings, but invariably on the chest and abdomen. Take the gulls and the terns; they are dressed in white, and a tender note of gray. The penguins have white on the breast and abdomen, though the back is dark.

are

Our woodbirds, our songsters, dressed in brown, gray, or green. Take the pheasants, who are true perchers; they have no white on the breast, just a touch of white sometimes about the neck, showing a hybrid strain. Take the partridge, our fixed resident; he has no white about him, nor yet the grouse; but go farther north, and then the ptarmigan, whose home is in the snow, he changes with the changing season, and shows a white breast to the cold north sky. Note that even the rabbit and the hare in this country have white underclothing. They want warmth to protect themselves against the cold, damp ground.

Is not this the meaning of the color white as a protection against cold? But some one may object, "Can you prove that white is warm?"