in earth-time, though you were taught well beforehand to make music through eternity: but here is corn already. Your little brown bird has not the divine spark to mount her heavenwards like the lark, nor can she sing with the earthly passion of the nightingale, but she is still a song-bird, and the big public will pet her, and make her a favourite, I think. As for us, we like her now, for her own sake. She flutters like a child through the house, and laughs and cries that it is a summer shower.' . . . Ulick is really so fond of her, that I must write him all this," added Miss Ina, after a happy pause (being affected, her breath was tightened); "and, some day, he may meet her as a famous singer and a pretty, refined lady."

Something in her voice, as of an awakening idea, made the hot jealousy in the young heart so close to her suddenly well up with bitterness; unseen in the dark, Bridget looked at the steamer's pale wash on the black waves below, and twisted her lovely features into a good scowl, which much relieved her; then she laughed in a constrained way.

"You are plotting, I know. Take care, you wicked woman! matchmakers may set fire to their own fingers."

Miss Ina was rueful, at once bethinking herself that though a maiden may refuse to marry a young man, it by no means follows she wishes him to marry happily anyone else, especially her friend. In her inmost heart such a maiden perhaps believes it would lead him to higher things to sigh even eternally for herself, far from him as the stars, than to turn to more earthly consolation: and you shall call her a dog in the manger, therefore, if you like. True enough, Bridget was vexed; though whether she was a dog in the manger

"I am so looking forward to teaching Jacoba," softly ejaculated Miss Ina; then, with the mild longing and hopefulness of a born teacher: "What will she be like, I wonder?"

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She must be nice. They all must be nice, from her father's letters. Oh! is it not a beautiful thing to think of going back to the country and the people our ancestors left nearly two hundred years ago; of being so kindly called over to them when we are in trouble! It is like a dream that I ever wrote that letter!" answered Bridget, saying nearly the same words for nearly the two hundred and fiftieth time; the

enthusiasm of both, and wonder at it all, and suspense of expectation having grown with every past day, till they would have been overbalanced with gladness, but for foregone sorrow which still weighed heavy as lead in the other scale. Between both they were unnerved. It is too much, each thought.

Said Miss Ina, plaintively, unable longer, despite enthusiasm, to bear up against a disgust and hatred of the whirr and quiver beginning under her feet, that went up through her whole body :

"Doesn't your head feel all cold, dear ?-and how the oil smells!-it is so hot near that funnel."

"I am going to be desperately sick, I know," replied Bridget, with a good groan. "You may as well be honest and say the same. The Irish crossing was nothing to this. Luckily, I would bear twice as much to go and see them."

Whereupon both rose, and tottered to their berths through groups of misguided people, mostly foreigners, who meant to spend the night on deck. The miserable ones, who in the cabin of any vessel feel much like Jonah inside the whale, being heaved up merely to sink down again, with a slow torture, whereof the monotony is only broken by an occasional sidelong wriggle-most fiendish of all the contortions of the seemingly living thing that bears them-may know how melancholy overflows the mind at moments during that prostration. Bridget became, as she would herself have called it in healthier moments, so sentimental that she found the tears running down her face in the night; and feeling quite willing to go to the bottom, life having no more charms! was crying in her heart a certain name over and over again with a misery that frightened herself, and a self-pity that made her still more wretched, for it was like drinking her own tears.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN THE LOW COUNTRIES.

A man

By Providence peculiarly blest,
With him the strong hilarity of youth

Abides, despite gray hairs, a constant guest.
His sun has veered a point toward the west,

But light as dawn his heart is glowing yet;

That heart, the simplest, gentlest, kindliest, best,

Where truth and manly tenderness are met

With faith and heavenward hope, the suns that never set.
SIR H. TAYLOR.

MORNING rose over the land they were nearing; and as Miss Ina and Bridget stood on deck about seven o'clock, drinking in the early freshness of the air, and watching eagerly for the first glimpse of Rotterdam, they already smiled feebly over their afflictions of the past night.

Steaming up the broad brown bosom of the rippling Maas, they stared dreamily, with but half-awake eyes, at the flat green ozier-banks on either side the river, backed by rows after rows of poplars, behind which rose low sand-hills, producing a plentiful crop of windmills. Now they neared the bright clean town facing the river; were amongst shipping; slackened-then stopped.

Bridget was torn asunder between lively fear of losing their luggage and the delightfulness of eyeing the foreignlooking houses, and watching a most curious river-boat alongside a vessel, into the hold of which the boatmen were flinging round Dutch cheeses, as old Munn at home would load a cart with turnips. She did not know for a time how she herself was gazed at; then, becoming aware how many of the passengers' eyes had turned towards them, held her head all the higher, but with a secret uneasiness as to whether they were not strangely dressed. In the bustle that ensued, the captain, seeing them ill-fitted for a crowd, himself helped Miss Ina along the gangway, got them Dutch change, and put them into a conveyance. Bridget at once made herself purse-keeper; tried to believe she understood the strange money to a

stuyver, but felt frightfully puzzled in secret. Away they rattled from the ships and wide landing-place over a bridge to their railway; then both began to recover their wits, dazed by the jabber around in an unknown tongue, and alighting, found-by dint of varied pleasant intonations of the word Haarlem, and a happy knack of guessing their train would not start for more than an hour yet.

"Let us breakfast, and have some of that nice thick chocolate?" cried the girl, feeling as healthfully hungry as any child; and looking round the refreshment-room, that was cool and shadowed still, though the morning promised heat, with a glee that found almost everything novel, and what was novel charming; even to the amazing thickness of the white breakfast-cups.

So they had breakfast, and then sallied out to wander; Miss Ina, too, feeling as if the different air, and sights, and sounds, acted on her like wine; gladdened also with a sense of delighted freedom in having come away from the north of that far western island, to a degree at which people with money and health, to whom travel is a simplest occurrence, marking the seasons, might smile with easy ridicule.

Over canal bridges, and along rough-paved streets, these two wandered on that sunny morning. The boys driving dogs in green carts; the women coming from early marketing with gold or silver skull-caps on their heads, and snowy mob-caps too, only saved, apparently, from taking flight by great gold spiral pins; the calls and cries, so unintelligible to her, made Bridget feel as if she were an impertinent young person in modern dress walking about among the figures of an old Flemish picture; especially since, at that hour, few people of the upper classes were out in the streets, in commonplace attire like her own. Miss Ina fitted into any picture as remarkable without being an anachronism. One might always fancy her as a Sister of Mercy in her black gown, cut with a certain severity of plainness.

Here, down this street of pretty houses, bright with flowers, beside each window of which hung little lookingglasses, the white-capped housemaids, in lilac print gowns, were syringing the closed windows and the green shutters till panes and paint shone like a new pin.

"It is all so quaint and clean-so clean and quaint," said

Miss Ina; like Bridget, ready to praise everything. "If we were English, it might not strike one so much; but the contrast with Irish notions of cleaning up is so sharp."

"Mrs. Munn would assure us loudly she was always too throng for such superfluity of scrubbing," put in Bridget, laughing quite merrily in her low way. "Well, our dirt is picturesque sometimes; and, to my mind, it is far better for nations, like persons, to be distinguished in some way than to be respectably dull."

A gentleman passed just then, and gave a quick glance, as if the voice attracted him.

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That is a stranger, like ourselves, from the way he is looking about him; he is not un-English either, but he wears his very coat differently, as if being well-dressed gives him pleasure. Now-Ulick”—she had hesitated imperceptibly at the name, but went on in her old tone of mocking affection -"he is always happiest without gloves and in an old shooting coat. Don't laugh.”

"Wait, child, till you get more experience of gentlemen; you see one man and begin at once criticising," smiled Miss Ina.

Bridget thought the jesting reproof unnecessary; she was not so entirely countrified as not to have an opinion of her own.

They strolled, then, through the vegetable market under the trees, where each seller sat by her fruit and garden-stuff, that made spots of bright colouring; looked with interest at the brown-painted wooden booths, which were being erected for the Kermes, some already gay with rows of tumblers and blue and scarlet glass pipkins, others, little cook-shops. Then they slowly retraced their steps.

On the railway platform Miss Bridget's dark eyes suddenly perceived the stranger of the street, as her aunt climbed with slight difficulty into the high carriage. He stepped forward politely to help them, then got in himself. Being on the lookout for romance, pretty Bridget just wondered in her vain little heart whether it was quite by accident he chose that carriage; but she was too eager for this first glimpse into the heart of the land where her ancestors had dwelt, and her kinsfolk now lived, to trouble herself on this point till some spare moment; so looked out long and earnestly with her face turned to the window.