shrinks sadly when it comes to be written down; the atmosphere it bloomed in has departed and leaves it in a chilly world. Talk is naturally loose in form, and requires to be braced up and to undergo a severe process of selection and arrangement before it will bear the cold light of print. So at least it seems to us, and Miss Fowler has no sense of literary form. In addition to that she makes her characters mouthpieces for ex cathedra utterances upon art, literature, morals, religion and theology. The utterances are well meant; Miss Fowler is only too conscious of her responsibilities as a teacher; but they evince a lamentable crudeness of intelligence. In the beginning of "The Farringdons" we are particularly occupied with Elizabeth's research into the basis of revealed religion under the guidance of an agreeable young sceptic. It is to be hoped that faith will never encounter a more formidable adversary. One may skip all this, but it is impossible not to be annoyed by the touch of false tragedy when we read how this same amateur inquirer finds himself converted to a faith in immortality by the death of his little son and the longing it breeds, yet unable to convert again the foolish little wife whom (in default of Elizabeth) he has married and perverted.

Perhaps all this criticism amounts merely to an assertion that Miss Fowler is young and not very fully educated (she is capable, for instance, of writing "euphony" when she means "euphemism"). But we are considering her as an artist, and as an artist she is liable to the reproach of ignoring her own limitations. And her wit is a snare to her. "Dear friend, let us never try to be funny," remarks a character in "The Farringdons." Miss Fowler should write up over her worktable, "Dar friend, let us never try to be too funny." The Silverhampton picnic is an awful example. Also the de

sire for antithesis natural to a wit betrays her into sad faults of taste. A lady at Silverhampton "went to sleep one night in a land whose stones are of iron, and awoke next morning in a country whose pavements are of gold." That is bad enough. But when Elizabeth has found out through her lover's all but mortal illness the act of selfabnegation to which she has owed her wealth, there is a worse lapse. She comes to his bedside to tell him that she loves him and has always loved him.

"How did you find it out, my dearest?" he asked at last.

"Through finding out that you loved me. It seems to me that my love was always lying in the bank at your account; but until you gave a cheque for it you couldn't get at it. And the cheque was my knowing that you cared for me."

1

No doubt he is her trustee, and the association of ideas may be held to have suggested the metaphor; but a young lady who could be so ingenious at such a moment would surely be a strange animal.

Success which overshadows the merit of other and finer writers naturally prejudices a lover of literature against the successful one, and we may be unfair to Miss Fowler. We cannot take her picture of society seriously; she knows not enough of life or of the world. But she is witty, she is shrewd, and she may live to be more discriminating in her selection of epigrams; and if she is wise she will return to the genuine sources of her talent. By far the best thing in her books is the study of Martha, the old servant in the Seaton household-a character who gives her creator fair claim to rank not merely as a wit, but as a humorist. It is a depressing circumstance that Miss Fowler's books have certainly not improved as they went on-in this re

structive power, yet somehow one cannot look forward confidently to any such advance as would give her a permanent place in literature. Still we recognize gratefully that her books are not only pleasant to read, but are likely to exercise a salutary influence on morals and manners, for they are written by a woman who is evidently in touch, socially and intellectually, with the best culture of the day. Her philosophy of conduct and opinion is not paraded in detached passages, but it underlies the whole texture of her work, and there is nothing cheap or secondhand about it; such as it is, it is genuinely assimilated.

CHAPTER I.

"It is quite useless, Mummy," said the eldest daughter, a comely woman and the mother of several comely children, "all your nice little schemes and plans to provide John with a wife are quite thrown away; he will never marry."

"Then he fails in his duty, my dear," said the charming, prim old lady with the white hair who sat at the head of the long table, round which were grouped her daughters and daughtersin-law and grandchildren. The occasion was the annual gathering of the Whipp family at the old home near Brierly-Stoke. Some of its members lived in Brierly-Stoke itself, and could walk out to the White House on any afternoon or evening; but others were settled at a greater distance, one son in London and a daughter in Manchester, and it had been a long-established custom that they should all meet once a year at Grannie's. The women folk

and children arrived early, in good time for Grannie's one o'clock lunch, while the fathers, sons and brothers joined them in the evening.

"Is it everybody's duty to marry?" asked Ethel, the youngest daughter, who ruled Grannie (though she did not know it) at the White House. "What would you say to me, Mummy, if I were to desert you some fine day for the sake of a mere man?"

"I hope you will desert me, my dear," said the old lady, with dignity, "when the right person comes to claim you. Marriage is the happiest and safest condition of life for both sexes.

"Now, Mummy," said Ethel reproachfully, "it isn't fair to bully me when you know I am the only eligible unmarried person present and have nobody to stick up for me. No, Kitty," she said in parenthesis to her eldest niece, "you are really not grown up at seventeen. Of course all the others will agree with Mummy; they are in for matrimony and they can't get out of

it, so they pretend it is we single ones who are to be pitied. I declare I'll make up to Cousin John to-night and sympathize with him. We'll start a Society for the Defence of the Unmarried against arch schemers like Mummy."

"Mummy's doctrines will never prevail," said the second son's wife, "so long as John has Eliza Jones to manage for him; she makes him too comfortable."

"Eliza would make an excellent servant under a firm mistress," said the old lady judicially, "but John is ruining her by placing her in a position of authority."

"John will never believe a word against his treasure."

"It's odd," said a whimsical voice, "but I wonder what connection there is between John and strawberries? Just at this very minute every year-oh Prissy, what a mess you are making of your pinafore!-we begin to discuss him; it wouldn't be so surprising if he came up with the beef, but there's really nothing suggestive of sweetness about John."

They all laughed, and the talk was turned upon some other members of the large connection. The Whipps were a very united family, and it was a recognized duty at those yearly meetings to inquire after every member of the clan, even to second and third cousins. John, as old Mrs. Whipp's eldest nephew, was for a variety of reasons an object of chief interest. For one, he was the most prosperous of the Whipps, and as a private banker held a position of some importance in the little market town and the country beyond it. There had been another Whipp, a junior partner in the bank, when John succeeded his father, but this cousin had died young, leaving his widow and daughters to John's care. John had faithfully looked after them-not always an easy task-until the widow had mar

ried again and taken her children with her to Australia.

Perhaps it was the burden of this ready-made family that had hindered him from thinking of marriage while he was young, but there was certainly no excuse for his remaining a bachelor after Ada had captured her rich squatter and the girls had made good matches in the Bush. Aunt Anne, who lived with him, was certainly no reason, for Aunt Anne, besides being old and invalided, wouldn't have contended with a fly. But here was John arrived at forty, beginning to get stout, decidedly gray at the temples, and still wifeless! So that every year at the White House feast there was the same lively wonder as to whether Mummy's attacks upon the fortress of John's heart were making any impression. Mummy herself was beginning to be a little discouraged, for the pretty girls and the good girls and the sensible girls whom in turn she recommended (but with the utmost artfulness and tact) to John's notice were finding more appreciative lovers and husbands, and there was almost no one left but her own Ethel, whom, for some inscrutable and entirely feminine reason, she would not willingly have resigned to John.

When asked why her ardor for John's happiness stopped short at this sacrifice, she would answer with reserve that they were first cousins, and first cousins should certainly not marry.

Ethel, had she been questioned, would have advanced a still more conclusive reason. Nothing would induce her to marry a man whom you couldn't by any possibility call Jack, who was fat and forty, and who thought of nothing but his dinner.

When John Whipp reached the White House that evening, the family with the exception of the babies, who had been put to bed, was assembled on the lawn. They greeted him heartily, the

Manchester cousin, and the London cousin, and the Brierly-Stoke cousin, who had gone some months before on a voyage to Australia and had just got home in time for Grannie's fête, They chaffed him in their light-hearted way too.

"Not married yet, John? Why, man, for what piece of perfection are you waiting? Is there nobody good enough to reign at Laurel Grove?"

"Don't say that! It will make it so hard for 'the not impossible she' who may yet be Mrs. John."

"You will soon be left quite unsupported, the sole bachelor in a much married family. Even Evan has deserted to our side." Evan was the young cousin who had been in Australia, and came back to find his fate awaiting him at home.

The eldest daughter, a pillowy, comfortable creature with a cooing voice, drew the bashful, blushing Evan forward.

"If it isn't against your principles," she said, "won't you congratulate the boy and the Mummy, John? You truly 'may."

"Is this another of Aunt Emily's diplomatic triumphs?" John's dark face looked pleasant when he smiled. "Why, of course, Evan, boy, I wish you joy with all my heart. Do I know the lady?"

"A

"Such a dear girl-such a sweet girl," came a chorus of feminine voices. Miss Birch, the granddaughter of a school friend of Grannie's. She would have been here to-day, only her mother fell ill and she had to go home. Some people have such ill luck in their illnesses."

John left the lawn and went up to the veranda, where, under the nodding orange-blooms of the William Allan Richardson, the old lady sat in a basket-chair with a little court about her. John bent and kissed the little white hand.

"Ah, John, you will never let me scheme benevolently for you."

Nevertheless she was very gracious to him, taking his arm when the dinner was announced. It was always John's privilege as the head of the family to be seated next her at the June dinner. And though she disapproved of him in some ways, and his obstinacy piqued her, she could not but be sympathetic and kind when he confided in her that he was very much bothered and worried, and had scarcely thought he should be able to dine at the White House that day, for Eliza, his housekeeper, had fallen ill with an acute attack of the rheumatism to which she was subject.

She recognized the seriousness of the situation, for Eliza, though Grannie thought her too forward and managing, was undoubtedly a very valuable servant; she was also without comparison the best cook in Brierly-Stoke or for many miles round it; indeed it was Brierly-Stoke's firm opinion that she couldn't be beaten in a test of skill even by the French artiste Sir James Hall brought from town while his house was full at the shooting season.

"The worst of it is," said John, feeling the relief of a good grumble, "I've invited some men for whom I specially wanted things right to dine on the 20th, and Dr. Gibson says Eliza won't be up and about again for three or four weeks. It's an awkward fix, and I don't know where to turn for help. They can't cook anything fit to eat at the Red Lion, or I might have taken them there."

"You can have Cole, and welcome."

But John shook his head gloomily. Cole could compass nothing but the plain family dinner-the fish and joints and sweets Grannie spread liberally be

fore her guests. But to John's mind to sit down to such a board was not to dine at all, but simply to eat in order to satisfy appetite. Eliza had been in John's service twelve years, ever since he built Laurel Grove and settled himself there. At first he had been proud of her skill and the reputation it gave him-for he practised a very generous hospitality-as the giver of the most refined and best-thought-out little dinners, but by-and-by, perhaps because he had no worthier object with which to fill his life, he learnt to prize her cooking for its own sake, and became something of an epicure in his way. At least it was understood in the family that when you asked John to dinner you had to be very particular indeed over the menu. So all felt but Grannie, who said in her sweet dignified way that she and Cole were twenty years behind the rest of the world, too old to learn new-fangled ways, and that what had been good enough for John's parents ought to be good enough for himself and his friends.

Yet quite early next morning Grannie was seated in her carriage, and being driven over to Laurel Grove to see if there was nothing she could suggest for Eliza's comfort. One of the London and two of the Manchester grandchildren, privileged as visitors, were seated on the roomy opposite seat of the old-fashioned barouche, and they promised to be very good and quiet when Grannie got out at the gate of Laurel Grove.

Grannie did not quite like having to walk up the long straight path between the laurels which christened the villa. She thought it an inconvenient arrangement for wet days, and if she disapproved of John's dinners she also disapproved of his house. It was too new, too modern. He ought to have lived in an older house and kept more servants; more servants are always wanted in an old house, where there are

no baths or gas or other conveniences -but then the dignity it confers! Grannie thought a great deal of dignity.

Yet she was gentleness itself with the angry and perturbed Eliza, who tossed about on her pillows, and said she couldn't but think Providence had made a mistake, and meant to humble some other Eliza Jones-the name was common enough she supposed-for whatever in the name of wonder would Mr. John do without her?

"Compose yourself, Eliza," said Mrs. Whipp soothingly, "my nephew will not suffer."

"And a dinner party coming on and me lying here!" cried Eliza, making another attempt at a flounce and stopping short with a groan. "What will become of the credit of the house with nobody but that little fool Jane to depend on a girl as would lose her head if it wasn't tight on her neck."

Before the thought of such a calamity Eliza broke down in helpless sniffs, and Grannie found herself committed to all sort of rash promises of help and succor, in which it was easy to see, from the petulant shoulder she turned upon her consoler, Eliza put not the smallest faith.

In truth, it was a defenceless household without the redoubtable Eliza to order its goings. Miss Anne Whipp was making a pretence of breakfasting in bed when Grannie knocked at her door, but the tea was colorless and the toast flabby; Miss Anne, the most unassertive of human beings, ate it meekly. She was a very tall woman, with a long weak back and a tendency to neuralgia, for which reason she was seldom seen without a strip of red flannel pinned round her face. Grannie, delicately upright, her white china crêpe shawl beautifully draped about her slim shoulders, looked much the younger of the two, though in reality she was ten years cousin Anne's senior. They discussed the situation, Miss