state. She supplied me with hands, eyes, memory, and observation, and guided me about as a sleepwalker might be guided by a careful friend who feared for him the shock of a too sudden waking. In spite of all her watchfulness, however, I experienced every now and then the cold shock of being brought suddenly from my dreamland face to face with the realities of every-day life. Some rude contact with fact would shiver my whole existence to pieces, and a sudden overwhelming sense of self-disgust and utter discouragement would fall upon me. I cannot describe the pain to any one who has not felt it. It was usually the having failed in some very obvious duty, or made some very ridiculous mistake, that caused the scales to fall from my eyes. I used to hear, not faintly, but with the distinctness of a doom, the gentle despairing reproof, which was all my mother ever thought it worth while to bestow upon me.

Well, this is just like you, Janet; I never expect any help or comfort from you-I give you up! You never will be like anybody else! What use is all your reading, when you can't do the simplest thing that you are told!"

I used always to acknowledge, in my inmost heart, the justice of these sentences. If I could have felt

myself the least bit ill-used, I should not have suffered as I did. For all the time I had such a high ideal of what I should like to be, such a longing to be important to others, that it was no wonder I was thrown by those mild reproofs into a state of tumult, which puzzled my poor mother as much as my usual inertness did.

Hilary was my best helper in my times of disgrace and woe. We had many a talk over my troubles in the old garret, where I used to retire after a scolding, to cry at my leisure, and wait for Hilary's return from school. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that I talked, and that Hilary proved his sympathy by listening patiently while I abused myself. He used to sit by my side on the little window-seat, his elbows on his knees, and a puzzled frown on his face, only stopping me now and then to make me repeat some exaggerated phrase, and to question its truth in a matter-of-fact way, which sometimes forced me to laugh heartily, and brought me to reason. When I could not, or would not laugh, Hilary had another resource for bringing my complaints to an end. 'Well, Janet," he would say, you are as stupid and ugly and unfortunate as you say, and if my mother does think that you will

"if

VOL. I.

D

never do anything like other people, there is at least one thing which already you do better than any one else you are the best hand in the world at looking out words in the dictionary, and finding out what sense there is in Virgil and Homer-so dry your eyes, and come downstairs, while there is time for us to go through to-morrow's construing before tea." I remember distinctly that Hilary always found more words to look out, and seemed more hopelessly puzzled about the sense of the passage he was preparing, when I was in disgrace with the elders of the family, than when things were going on smoothly.

near.

I learned enough Latin and Greek during those half-hours to be able to profit by the extra lessons, which my father began to give Hilary in the evening, when the time for his finally leaving school drew There was a scholarship attached to the school of which my father was head-master, and my father, to the terrible dismay of the whole family, came to the conclusion that there was nothing to prevent Hilary's gaining it. No one ever thought of saying that Hilary was dull, or even not clever. My father, on one or two occasions, had been heard to pronounce that there was the making of a very solid scholar in him, but I for one felt that his scholarship would

Hilary's was a

never be of my father's making. slow-moving, exact mind, very observant of facts, and capable of pondering endlessly on their bearing on each other, but extremely indifferent to modes of expression and delicate questions of taste. He never could be made to see why Homer and Demosthenes were to be so devoutly worshipped for using one word in a particular place instead of another. Even I used to catch a spark of enthusiasm when my father, now and then, made impatient by Hilary's slow way of turning over the leaves of his book, would begin himself to read the portion that was to form their evening's lesson; rolling out the grand, Greek words in his fine voice, and emphasizing one here and there with a loving intonation, as if the speaking of it gave him an actual sensation of pleasure. I used to look across anxiously at Hilary, but there never was any answering look of intelligence on his face; the colour used to go tingling up to the very roots of his hair, but his agitation was caused by shame for his own stupidity and dread of what was sure to follow. It was always a bad beginning for the evening when my father read the lesson aloud. Hilary used always to begin his translation in a more husky, indifferent voice than usual, and my

father's impatient tap-tap on the table used to come before the end of the first sentence.

Hilary's construing was seldom inexact, but even I knew why it tortured my father, and I could have told beforehand the point at which they would break down. Hilary's equivalent for the word my father had emphasized was sure not to be a happy one; then the tap-tap ceased, and my father turned to Charlie with a look of relief. When this occurred, Nesta and I sometimes trembled in fear of a catastrophe, which, however, never came. Up to the moment of my father's calling upon him, Charlie would probably have been happily engaged in reading a story-book under the table, or intent on stealing a pinch of snuff from my father's box, to administer to a certain favourite black cat that shared my father's arm-chair, and was supposed to know more Greek than Hilary. We were always in terror lest his inattention should at length bring him into serious disgrace, but it never did, Two anxious minutes would follow my father's appeal, and then, after one rapid glance down the page, Charlie would begin, stumbling very much at first, and making a glaring mistake or two; but warming up with the subject as he went on, and when the critical passage was reached, out would come