it's nothing to me if they eat 'em raw. There's eggs enough, and water enough, and kettles enough-fire enough, too, for that matter; but if I'm not up to the store in a jiffy, Squire Hubbard 'll be off with my quarter of mutton. He owes me two now.'

And Mrs. Hopper departed; leaving Martha, in great admiration of her smartness and liberality, to get breakfast with Jerusha, who was a chip of the same block. Or rather a whittling-with very faint blue eyes, and a tongue that was strong in proportion.

With this young lady's able assistance and conversation, Martha prepared both table and breakfast admirably; and Rosalie found but one thing wanting to her comfort. Now that the time was come for parting with her brother, she felt the old painful doubt of it grow stronger; and often wished that she had refused to leave the city. Sometimes she half resolved to go back with him; and then a look at Hulda's face, already brightening in the pure air, kept her silent. And silent the whole breakfast time was. But after breakfast, when the table was cleared, and Hulda had gone out to inspect clover heads, Thornton spoke.

I hope you feel satisfied with your farm house, Alie ?"

"I should be, if you were to be in it."

"I thank you, my dear-I am afraid I should not.”

"I have been wishing this morning that I had not come, or that I was going back with you.'

"Thank you for that, too," he said, drawing back her hair and kissing her, "but I do not join in the wish."

They stood silent again; and the little wagon that was to take him to meet the stage came slowly out of the barn, and was attached to its locomotive.

"What commands, Alie?" said Thornton, then. "I must be off, my dear, in five minutes."

She turned and laid her hands on his shoulders after her old fashion, and looked at him, and did not speak. Her heart was too full, each word that came to her lips seemed too weak; and without words the brother and sister parted.

He is able to keep that which I have committed to him,' Rosalie thought, as she saw Thornton drive off, and caught the last wave of his hand. And quitting the window she sat down and took her Bible. Not to read, but to turn over leaf after leaf; catching here and there a word of comfort, a word of hope, a word of strength; until the promises had done their work. Her lips lost their nervous trembling, and with a few long breaths the heart beat easier; and laying her head down upon the closed book Rosalie cried herself to sleep.

"Well, this is a pretty state of things!" said Miss Jumps, when she came in to set the table for dinner. "Here's everything ready -and the mutton 'll be rags, and no living creature can tell what the potatoes 'll be. Pickles 'll keep that's one thing, and so 'll bread, and she wants it bad enough in all conscience." softly closing the door at the end of her soliloquy, Martha retired.

And

CHAPTER XXVII.

But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine,
She learned from her mother a precept divine

About something that butters no parsnips, her forte
In another direction lies, work is her sport,

(Though she'll curtsey, and set her cap straight, that she will,
If you talk about Plymouth and one Bunker's Hill).

FABLE FOR CRITICS. How lovely it was! how fresh, how sweet!-with what a fair face did Massachusetts welcome the summer. Ceres followed close on the steps of her labourers, and the young grain, with its vivid green hue, was fast shooting up into perfection. The potato fields with their long alternate lines of brown and green; the corn fields with their tufted crop; and meadows in the mowing stage, and others that were one spread of red clover blossoms, swelled upon the hills and sloped down into the valleys, and were dovetailed into each other as far as the eye could reach. Everything about the farms and about the houses had that perfectly done up look, which showed the owners quick of eye and hand. The fence rails were up, the bar-place stood steady, the gates swung freely and shut tight. And vines were trained, and wood-sheds full, and barns and outhouses in good order. The cattle too looked sleek, and the manycoloured droves of horses gambaded about the fields with the very friskiness of freedom and good living. Content was the very atmosphere of the region.

But Rosalie found it hard to get used to her new way of life. She loved its quietness with all her heart, but it gave her more thinking time than was quite good for her. For with a heart in itself perfectly in tune with all the sweet sounds and influences that were around her, she wanted a little of Hulda's untouched joyousness to take their full benefit. As it was they often set her a musing, as often perhaps made her grave as gay. Constantly the image of Thornton would present itself; and "what is he doing?" was no resting question, she wearied herself with asking what there was none to answer. She tried to throw the burden off, and yet the shadow of it remained; and like a fair plant deprived of the sunlight, her colour grew more and more delicate. Little Hulda was every day gaining strength and health, and her gambols were almost her sister's only amusement: but even from them Rosalie sometimes turned away, with a sickness at heart that refused to be forgotten.

For a while after Thornton left her, he wrote long letters, for him, and often; but then they dwindled, and became angel's visits only in the length of time between. Yet his sister craved even them most eagerly, and each time hoped to find more words and those more comforting. The change was the other way; and well she felt that they would have been longer had the writer been better satisfied with himself,-that if the stream of his daily thought and action had flowed in a purer channel, it would have turned with a fuller gush towards her. He was going on then just in the old way, and she was not there to use even her weak efforts.

And sometimes unbelief was ready to ask why?-and when faith bade her wait, then came back the old Captain's quotation—" It seemed as if I waited for light, and behold obscurity.

"It aint none o' my business, I do suppose," said Mrs. Hopper, one day, when she had followed Rosalie out to the edge of the ravine, and stood within three feet of her for some time without being observed; "and 'taint likely I'll get many thanks for speaking; but it does appear to me, Miss Clyde, that you want shaking up."

"I!" said Rosalie, starting.

Why, yes," said Mrs. Hopper, "you. What's the use o' coming out here to stand'n look at that brook-jus' as if it hadn't been running as hard as it could ever since the deluge."

"But it's a pretty thing to look at," said Rosalie.

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Maybe it is- said Mrs. Hopper,-"I'm not in that line o' business myself. I'd rather look at the mill tail. Do you more good too. Don't that everlasting spattering down there make you think of all the friends you ever had or expected?"

"What makes you imagine such a thing?" said Rosalie.

"Looked as if you'd been talkin' with half of 'em, to say the least. Now, I've always got too much to do for my friends to sit'n think about 'em."

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Suppose there was nothing else you could do, Mrs. Hopper?" said Rosalie.

"Then I'd take good care of myself for 'em-besides there always is something—one thing or t'other. Folks that can work, can work; and folks that can write, can write; and folks that can pray, can pray, one would suppose, and believe, too."

But Rosalie turned to her a face so submissive to this last reproof, that Mrs. Hopper had no heart to give more.

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Now I'll tell you what it is," she said, "my tongue's as rough as a card, I know, but it don't want to stroke things the wrong way; 'n it makes me feel queer to have you gettin' thin on the place and payin' so handsome too-which nobody ever did afore, nary one. To be sure you do run round after that child all day, but it's a question which way that works."

"What would you like to have me do?" said Rosalie, smiling. "Will you do it!" said Mrs. Hopper.

"I will try."

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Just let Hulda run round by herself a spell, then," said Mrs. Hopper-"I'll have an eye to her-and you get on one of the farm horses, and trot off to seek your fortune. I tell you old Lord North 'll shake up a person's ideas so you wouldn't know 'em again afterward!"

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Is Lord North one of the farm horses?" said Rosalie.

Why yes," said Mrs. Hopper, taking off her sunbonnet, and straightening the edge; "Stamp act and Lord North-he called em so because he hadn't no patience with Lord North. However, the horse behaves better 'n he did, by a long jump, and so does Stamp. Will you try him?"

If I can get a saddle and skirt—and find a day when the horse is not ploughing."

"He won't plough with you on his back," said Mrs. Hopper, "and you might do worse if he did. The saddle's easy enoughwhat ails the frock you have on?"

"O, it's too short,-I will get some stuff and make one."

"That's long enough, for gracious," said Mrs. Hopper-" you might as well not have tops to your feet, now; but fix it any way you like. I'll get some Indian willer and twist you up a first rate rattan. See if that don't put a little genuine red in your cheeks. All you've got now just makes you look whiter. Don't you want to go up to the sewin' meetin' this afternoon? they'd be tickled to death to see you, and if you can't knit you can look on."

"I will go anywhere you have a mind to take me," said Rosalie, with a hearty appreciation of the good will of her hostess.

"Well now, that's clever," said Mrs. Hopper. "I like to see folks that have got some reason into them. And I s'pose you wont mind your Martha's going along,-times when all the men fight together 'twont hurt the women to knit, I guess. But I don't believe now you'd be a bit stuck up in the best o'times-I'll say that for you, and you're the first city body I ever did say it for."

The sewing meeting-which might more properly have been called a knitting meeting-met that afternoon in a tall white house by the road side, which having neither porch, nor vines, nor piazza, nor even a wing, presented a singularly bare and staring appearance. It being generally supposed, however, that juvenile seats of learning should be as unattractive as possible, this was quite in order, and might be claimed as a model. Straight, square, the windows drawn up like the multiplication table, the doors at either end,-the building was highly fitted to inspire its tenants with a love for irregularities of any kind. Even the white paling was angled by rule, and equally distant from the house on every side.

At twelve o'clock that day the school had been dismissed for the usual Saturday afternoon holiday; and so soon thereafter as dinner could be eaten and cleared away, ones and twos and threes of the feminine population of White Oak, began to approach the angular schoolhouse paling. Some few in straw bonnets with knots of gay ribbon, but the most in calico sunbonnets,-made it is true after very different patterns-ruffled and unruffled, corded, pasteboarded, and quilted; but each with its long depending cape, and its somewhat careworn and hardfeatured face beneath.

Hardfeatured not by nature but by work, staid, and combed down, as their hair was combed back; and with a certain mingling of sober, subdued, wide awake, and energetic, in the general look and mien, which spoke a life of work and emergency that each one must meet for herself, and could. The mere walk of these women as they converged towards the schoolhouse, spoke energy and independence, there was freedom and self assertion in the very gait; yet more of the feeling which says "I am as good as you are," than of that which would say "I am better." Neighbours of very different standing indeed (as to wealth and name) exchanged most affable salutations; though always with that same air of gravity which seems chosen by our country people as more dignified than a smile.

"

Some-especially the younger women-carried fanciful and gaycoloured work bags, from the top of which stuck out bright knitting needles; but more had their work in their pockets, or merely wrapped together in their hands, just as it had been caught up from the window sill, and perhaps a twisted skein or two of yarn to bear it company. One or two were even knitting as they walked along.

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'I wouldn't wonder a bit if we were late," said Mrs. Hopper, as they went up the little slope down which the boys used to rush with accelerated speed the moment school was let out. Mis' Clipper's bunnet's gone in, and she aint apt to be the first apple that falls.". A steady murmur that issued from one of the end doors seemed to confirm this suspicion, and when they entered the room it was quite full. That is, it was well lined, for everybody sat back against the wall,-and there was a perfect glitter of knittingneedles. Knit, knit, knit, knit,-here a grey sock, and there a blue mitten, and there a scarlet comforter; while the knitters went carelessly on with their talk, looked out of the window and at each other's work, got up and crossed the floor and came back again, and never stayed their fingers for an instant. Eyesight seemed needless-except to examine Miss Clyde when she appeared, and to form an exact opinion as to her dress. One or two of the younger ones, who had worn straw bonnets to the meeting, laid down their work for a minute till the new arrival had taken her seat, but the others knit on as fast as ever; with merely a "Hope you're well, Miss Clyde," from those who felt best acquainted.

At the further end of the room a large wheel flew round and round, under the hands of a brisk young lady who stepped back and forth with very creaking shoes; and the bright little spindle whirr-r-red! off the yarn with consummate neatness and speed.

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What will you set me about?" said Rosalie, when she had found a place-not of rest-upon one of the hard wooden chairs. "Shall I wind some yarn?"

A person can do that for himself about as handy," said one of the company, who with her right knee a rest for the left, had elevated her left toe into the air, where it did duty as a reel.

"What then?" said Rosalie. "I am afraid I do not knit fast enough to be of much use in that way."

"Every roll makth one leth, Mith Clyde," said the brisk little spinner, stooping as she spoke to take another from the bundle that lay across the wheel.

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Yes, if I could turn them off as fast as you do," said Rosalie. "Maria Jane does spin fast," observed Mrs. Clipper.

"But look a here," said Mrs. Hopper, "there's just that one wheel-and I don't s'pose any one here's got spare knittin' work." Nobody had.

"There's nothing for her to do but to look on then," said Mrs. Hopper.

"What ails her to read the news?" said the postmaster's wife, producing a paper from her pocket. This only just come from York; and he brought it when it came in this noon, and then went