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From the Edinburgh Tales.
LITTLE FANNY BETHEL.

THERE is not a more weather-proof man in all London than myself, though I say it; nor one who, in all seasons, has more contempt for the cockney comforts of omnibuses, cabs, and all chance lifts whatsoever; from the dignity of "a friend's carriage," to a "set down" in the family apothecary's snug one-horse chaise. Yet, in one or two days of every year-those few days which have a sensible effect in thinning the rolling human tide which sets in from Temple-Bar, through Fleet-street and the Strand-I am sometimes-in spite of the protective powers of my famous umbrella-induced, knowingly, to give Nurse Wilks' remonstrances the credit of a temporary confinement; and to remain for a whole morning in my apartment, with no better society than a good seacoal fire, nor more amusing companion than my old "Diaries.' My readers know that these are kept in useless ledgers, crossed and re-crossed in choice hieroglyphics of my own invention. I trust none of my admiring friends-to vindicate the credit of their own sagacity in having distinguished me-will, after my death, present these tomes to the British Museum. They would assuredly puzzle future antiquaries more than the celebrated Rosetta stone. The key to that has, I believe, been found; but I defy any future Champollion to discover that the violet and the oak sapling, which illuminate my page 486, signify Little Fanny Bethel and somebody else.

In running over this aforesaid ledger, I am sometimes tempted to believe that I shall have a long account one day against my thriving brother James, the rich solicitor, for trouble taken and anxiety endured in his matters. He gets off by alleging that I never undertake any job for him unless I first take a fancy to it myself. He would insinuate that, in business affairs, I am little more than an amateur performer, and that I will play nothing save my own favorite pieces, and those in my own time; and that, in the particular case of the little Allahbad Bethels, upon which I raised a special claim, I was certainly a volunteer. It may have been so. The protracted silence of the relatives of two very young orphan creatures gave scope and leisure for anxiety upon their account to any one who chose to take interest in them. I had undertaken to communicate to their uncle, Mr. Bethel, then at Baden, the death of his brother in India. This event had been followed, in a few days, by that of Captain Bethel's widow; and the children, through the kindness of friends in the regiment of their father, had been sent to England by a private subscription. They were now on the high seas, consigned to the care of their late father's agent in London, Mr. James Taylor. The gist of my epistle was:"Rich and powerful elder brother, what is to be done with your younger brother's orphan children? You are head of the house; its fortunes have devolved to you in consequence of your rights of birth; but you have the feelings of a Christian and a brother, and the principles of an honorable man. You know your duty."-It was a well-worded epistle enough; but having been three times read and admired, and having received the praises of my sister Anne, I had the discretion to burn it, notwithstanding; and to adopt, with slight alteration, that concocted officially by my brother's clerk, George Roberts, which con

tained only the needful. I was aware of being upon ticklish ground with Mr. Bethel.

While he was pondering our information at Baden, the Indiaman, by which the little orphans were coming home, was encountering heavy gales in the channel; and, though not absolutely wrecked, the vessel was so much damaged, that it was found necessary to lighten her, as she lay off Margate. As many of the passengers as could get off in the pilot boats had landed; and the captain and subordinate officers, too much occupied by their onerous and responsible duties, had sent their little passengers to a hotel in Margate, together with their Ayah, or Hindoo nurse-maid; and, by a hasty note, informed my brother that they must immediately be taken away! Ay, taken away! But whither? Baden was mute; and the Rectory of Stockham-Magna gave no sign. In it resided another family of Bethels-" more than kin and less than kind."

"No independent provision for the poor little things at all!" sighed my ever good-hearted, indulgent sister-in-law. "But military men can now save so little in India, with reduced allowances and increased expenses."

"I shall never forgive Tom Bethel, though, for not ensuring his life," said my brother. "I urged him to it before he embarked, five years ago. Were it but a thousand pounds, it might have educated the boy at some cheap Yorkshire school; and surely the friends will take the little girl!"

"The friends!" I repeated; for this name for the aggregate Bethels of the hall and the rectory sounded at this time oddly to me, in relation to the children at Margate. But they must be taken away; and I was upon the road in the next hour.

The Bethels of -shire were one of those stanch, far-descended families of wealthy English commoners, who, from pride of birth and Jacobite politics, had disdained to veil a name so long distinguished in county annals under a modern title. They had even shunned the alliance of new-made nobility. But they had been much less successful in warding off the inroads of modern habits of expense. Notwithstanding their large estates, their church livings, and their West India property, the Bethels had been a struggling family for two generations; and, in the third, this began to be severely felt. It had been a family customexisting from the reign of Henry VIII., which had brought the Bethels a liberal share of the general spoliation" of that period-to reserve the best of the family-livings for the younger sons of the family-the second son being, in general, preferred. But, in the last generation, my gay acquaintance, Tom Bethel, between admiration of a dragoon uniform and saddle, and some compunctious doubts about his own vocation to the church, had committed the indiscretion-as this college friends called it-of allowing the third brother, John, to take orders, and step into the living of Stockham-Magna, which, of itself, was worth above a £1200 a-year.

"Indiscretion," and "great indiscretion," were the phrases of Tom's mother and sisters, with whom his fine temper and handsome person made him a favorite. This act was afterwards called in the family, "Tom's generosity;" for John, though much more cautious, had imprudently married a young woman of birth equal to his own, with exactly nothing between them, save the hopes

derived from Tom s vocation to glory. In due | ters of the whilom principal surgeon of Wincham, time, the Reverend John, who, his mother soon who, when attending the lady at the hall in a discovered, had a decided call, settled soberly sudden illness, had, as the reward of his skill and down in the rectory; gave up fox-hunting, to assiduity, obtained a half promise of the living for which, as a -shireman, he had been born; his son and their nephew:-it was, therefore, exchanged the trifle of chicken-hazard, into which liable to question, if not to doubt. No one in he had been seduced by his elder brother's fash- Wincham would or could believe that Mr. Bethel, ionable guests, for a quiet, earnest rubber of with his high-church principles and high gentlewhist, with a few pleasant neighbors; and, had manly feelings, could wink at an arrangement the family interest been as good as in the reign of which spared his own purse, by fixing his brother's the Charlesses, bade as fair to die a bishop as any family upon the new incumbent. It was not to be preceding Bethel of the stock. credited. But, at the same time, it was agreed, on all hands, that Mr. Whitstone, the new rector, was the most generous of cousins, and that Mrs. Dr. Bethel and her children still lived in the same comfort and elegance which they had enjoyed during the life of her husband.

The Dowager Mrs. Bethel informed those of her Cheltenham correspondents who were of a serious character, that her son, John, was a most exemplary and pious clergyman; and they reciprocated, that he was, indeed, an ornament to the Church of England, and one who, by his piety and learning, would adorn the mitre. His sermon at Brighton had made the proper impression in the proper quarter.

When Captain Bethel, about two years after his love-match, visited his relations previous to embarking for India, his young wife, who, though she still thought Tom "divinely handsome" in his dragoon uniform, had also felt the slightest possible pinch of poverty, exclaimed, as they drove from the rectory, What pity, dear Tom, that you conceived such an aversion to the church? Stockham-Magna would have been a paradise to us-and so near all our friends!"

Sales by piecemeal, and mortages by wholesale, had nearly eaten up the family estates of the Bethels; but Mr. Bethel still derived a very large income from the estates which his lady, also a Bethel, of a younger branch, had brought into the family; though the tenure by which they were held constituted the greatest cross which he and his wife were destined to bear. At her death, without children, they went to yet another branch of this far-spread stock; and Mrs. Bethel had given no heir to the united properties. The want of children, in a great and ancient family, like that of the Bethels, is always a subject of infinite interest to the kindred, and of concernment to the "I chose rather to die a general-and to plunder whole neighborhood. In ordinary circumstances, the enemy, instead of fleecing my flock, Frances,' "Mrs. Dr. Bethel, of the Rectory, might have subreturned Lieutenant Bethel. And, with hopes of mitted to the will of Heaven, under a misfortune being a general, he did die a captain. Mrs. Bethel which brought her own son next in succession; after gave a long, lingering, farewell look to that charm-"Tom's boy in India," indeed-but a child there ing place, where she could willingly have left her was hardly worth reckoning upon. As the famlittle girl, the infant Fanny; but, as she told us ily stood, however, she would far rather that a in passing through London, neither her mother-in-cousin-german of her daughters' should be at the law, the dowager, nor Mrs. John Bethel, had once spoken of her infant, deadly as India was to children.

head of this fine property, than that it should pass away to a lad in the north, whom no one knew anything about. Her sincere sympathy in the family affliction of Bethel's court, had advanced her in favor there; but it was her aversion to the unknown heir presumptive, sometimes laughingly insinuated, and at other times seriously betrayed, as if by accident, when prudence and good-breeding were conquered by strong feeling, that confirmed her influence at the hall.

Mr. and Mrs. Bethel, still a fashionable, but not now a gay couple, had lived a good deal on the continent for several years; during which period, their clever sister-in-law was their confidant and manager in all domestic affairs. It was, therefore, to her that Mr. Bethel wrote, upon receipt of my brother's letter, regarding the disposal of the orphan children. We were afterwards told that he was much affected by the death of his only remaining brother, whom he had always loved better than the Rev. John; and that, in the first impulse of tenderness, he proposed to take the children home; but his lady prudently referred to her sister-in-law.

People will die in England as well as in India, even though living in a comfortable rectory, drawing great tithes and small, and in momentary expectation of golden prebends. The family vault was again opened to receive the Rev. Dr. Bethel, shortly after he had followed his mother to that resting-place, and some months before the death of his brother in India. His wife, though she had rashly entered the family, had gained the esteem of its leading members, Mr. Bethel and his lady; and, when she was left a widow with three young children, things were arranged pleasantly for her, by the appointment of the same young cousin to the living, who had preached Dr. Bethel's funeral sermon. She continued to reside at the rectory, as before; and the intimacy between the family at Bethel's Court and that at the parsonage, became more cordial and intimate than it had ever been during the life of the excellent and venerated person, as he was called in the funeral sermon, who had formed the bond of union. It was whispered in the tea and card circles of Wincham-the neighboring market town, a place of great ecclesiastical antiquity, and, until the era of schedule B, of great political consideration-that Mrs. Dr. Bethel had a still deeper concern in the great and small tithes of Stockham-Magna, than arose from her continued residence in the rectory. But this amounted nearly to that ill-defined crime called simony; and the rumor had clearly originated I prevented it being literally realized to me; for I with one or other of the five Misses Roach, sis- ran up stairs to the parlor, where the fair little XLVIII. 6

LIVING AGE.

VOL. V.

In the mean time, I reached Margate without any remarkable adventures. These are, indeed, become as rare in England as the wild boar or the wolf.

What a pretty image is that of Campbell !—
Led by his dusky guide,
Like Morning brought by Night.

sputtering, and addressing me in those shrill tones, which, had I not been well accustomed to overhear the colloquies of my fair neighbor, Mrs. Plunkett, the Irish orange-woman-a title, by the way, this of Orange-woman, Peg has, of late, mightily resented-I should have imagined arrant scolding; especially as, in the course of her appeal, her dark eyes continually flashed from me to the children, and shot out lurid fire. So far, however, as Fanny could interpret Hindostanee, the discourse of the Ayah was the very reverse of hostile. It was compassionate and complimentary of herself— a daughter of Brahma-upon her sacrifices for the sake of the children, and her exceeding condescension in coming into contact with a vile, degraded, and filthy hog-eating race of Europeans.

people whom I sought, sat upon the carpet, in the | this passed, the Ayah was gesticulating even to lap of their dusky guide-the amusement and delight, with their strange speech and pretty voices and ways, of all the chamber-maids and waiters of the establishment. The little English speech among the three was possessed by the lovely fairy creature afterwards known among us as "Little Fanny Bethel." She was, at this time, not more than six years old, small and delicate of her age; and with the tender pale-rose tint of children who have been born, or who have spent their childhood in India. She started up on my approach, advanced a step, and then timidly hung back, raising her mild and intelligent gray eyes with a look of doubt and deprecation. I was more struck with the remarkable expression of the countenance of the little maiden than with the loveliness of her features, and the flood of silky fair hair, which contrasted so singularly with the bronzed complexion and dark eyes of the squat attendant upon whose shoulder she shrunk back. Her heart, revealed through her eyes, gave out meanings which it was impossible that she could herself have apprehended. Her feminine instincts, child as she was, had far outstripped her understanding; and she looked at me with a perplexed consciousness that her fate was in my hands-that she was a friendless orphan among strangers. Happy confidence-or be it credulity, still thrice blest credulity of childhood, which throws itself, in boundless trust, into the bosom of whatever approaches it wearing the smiling semblance of kindness! Little Fanny's brow and eyes cleared and brightened at my frank accost, and she voluntarily continued to hold by the hand which she had kissed in a pretty fashion of her own. Poor little thing! my heart already yearned over her; her kiss was more loving than a lover's.

In a very few seconds, nothing seemed to affect Fanny, save a feeling of sisterly responsibility for the manners and bearing of her little brother, in whose behalf she wished to bespeak my kindness, while she introduced him to me.

By the kindness of the landlady, I procured some warm clothing for the half-naked children; and we set out for London, to which I intended to return by Chatham, that Mrs. Walpole, and my friend Governor Fox, might see their old friend Tom Bethel's children. If I was not legacy-hunting, I was friend-seeking for my pretty charge. The Ayah sat in the bottom of the carriage, by her own request; and Fanny keeping constant possession of my hand, looked from one window, while Tom hallooed from another, as we bowled through the rich meadows and farmy fields of the Isle of Thanet, as light-hearted and happy, as if the fondest parents and the most genial home were awaiting us at our journey's end.

Tom, by this time, did me the honor to suppose I could play the tom-tom very well, and to command a specimen of my powers when we should get home; and with his sister's aid as interpreter, he communicated many things very interesting to himself, which had taken place at Allahbad, or upon the voyage: Without anything approaching the grace, sweetness, and infant fascination of little Fanny, Master Tom was a manly and intelligent child; and, as the brother and sister, having sung a Hindostanee air and said their prayers, fell asleep in my arms, worn out by their own vivac

of society, or rather of factitious feeling, which made a horse, a picture, or a necklace, any mark of conventional distinction-yea, the merest trifle, be considered so important by their high-born relations-and those lovely and engaging creatures, gifted with such admirable powers and wonderful faculties, be considered a burden and a plague. There is nothing of so little real value, save for a few years to the original owners, as those small germs of the lords of the creation. The value of every other commodity is better maintained in polished society, than what is surely, in mistake, called the noblest and most valuable of all. Had Tom and Fanny been a brace of spaniels, or cockers of the King Charles or Marlborough breed, how much easier would it have been to dispose of them.

Tom, who, from the lap of his nurse, had been anxiously eyeing the visiter, was a bold, resolute-ity, I could not help philosophizing upon the state looking urchin, with a square and very broad forehead, which he knitted into a most martial frown, when I attempted to take the hand that he clenched and drew back. Master Tom's attitudes were as · valiant in defiance as his sister's had been gentle in deprecation; but, as I am not apt to fall in love with strangers at first sight myself-nor fond of your very civil and demonstrative people-I winked at Tom's repulse, and wisely forebore pressing my attentions until they might be more welcome. I was already amused by the little maiden, who, with a look of indescribable childish blandishment, whispered in Hindostanee, and caressed the little fellow, as if coaxing him not to throw away his friend in foolish passion, until Master Tom laughed out with returning good humor, and looked so much handsomer when showing his white teeth, and a mouth wreathed with smiles and dimples, that I made a second attempt to introduce myself, which again instantly overclouded him, and grieved Fanny.

Governor Fox kept us a day, and treated us with the utmost kindness and hospitality. Black Sam whose amusing tricks probably reminded Tom of his Indian bearer, ingratiated himself with the Ayah and the children; and the Governor yielded so far to the infantine fascination of little Fanny, as to present her with a lapful of his favorite African curiosities; while he privately

"Poor Tom is so young-dear little fellow!" she whispered in her liquid infant voice, and in a tone between apology, coaxing, and entreaty, which might have melted a savage. I felt that, if all the world were like myself, the faults of tur-assured me, that, if Madam Bethel and the rest bulent Tom stood a good chance of being forgiven, were it but for the sake of sweet Fanny. While

failed to do the handsome thing by Tom's babies, why then he was a bachelor without chick or

ever-wakeful and watchful affection for her little brother. She already seemed his unconscious guardian angel, whose salutary influence over his wayward moods was daily upon the increase. Though Tom, in his violent fits, would meet a sugar plum, a sugared promise, or a menace, alike with a blow, he would look serious and try to command himself, when he perceived how much he afflicted Fanny.

child, and he would show them Northampton- circle; nor did Tom want friends and admirers, shire! This he again solemnly repeated as he who were willing to place his faults to an Indian put us into the coach for London; and I was not education. Along with little Fanny's singular disposed to forget it; for the governor was none sweetness of nature, was the fascination of her of your smooth-lipped professing persons. His word was his bond-and it carried interest, too. The orphans were received with genuine motherly kindness by my sister Anne, to whom Tom at once gave that place in his affections and confidence which it had taken me three days to acquire. Even yet he admitted of no personal contact, but returned a salute as often with a blow as a caress. The first trial of the children in London, was parting with their dark nurse, for whom we found While the children were displaying their natuan opportunity of returning home with a family ral characters in such childish ways, Mrs. Dr. going out to India. It was Tom's boast that he Bethel was making her calculations at Stockhamcried first when Moomee sailed away home; but it Magna; the result of which was, offering to take is certain that Fanny cried longest. The quick charge of Fanny, and to educate her along with sensibility of this child was less remarkable than her own two daughters. But, for the boy! the tenacity of her grief, which broke out afresh" She was indeed at a loss what to do with her when thus reminded of the loss of "poor mamma,' own son-women were so inadequate to training by the absence of Moomee. Time, the gracious boys even in their infant years." balm-shedder, usually does his work of healing It was not unreasonable to imagine that Mr. rapidly with patients under seven years of age- Bethel would charge himself with the education but it was not altogether so with Fanny Bethel; of both his nephews; and it is certainly easier to and Tom's perverseness was almost welcome to receive a little girl into a family where there are us as a diversion of her sorrow. Yet Tom's already girls, than to maintain a youth at school rebellion scarcely deserves so hard a name. Ac-and college. In the following week, I escorted customed to a train of Indian attendants antici- the children and my sister, who made a long-prompating every wish, studying every glance, and fol- ised visit, to Stockham-Magna. We had a charmlowing every movement like silent shadows, Mas- ing excursion. It was now near midsummer ter Tom, in a London nursery, felt like a deposed the pride of the year in the pastoral and woodprince, and was quite as ready to play the tyrant land country we traversed. And then the Rectory when an occasion offered. The turbulence, ca- of Stockham-Magna itself! I had never seen so price, and open rebellion in which he had been picturesque, so natural, so perfectly English a encouraged by the Ayah, had threatened to sub- resting-place for the musings of divine philosophy vert the mild despotism of Mrs. Gifford, my sister's-for dignified intellectual repose and calm medconfidential nurse, who, for eighteen years, had itation. Neither the district nor the particular been as supreme above stairs, in her legitimate spot boasted any bold original feature of scenery. territory, as was my brother's will in the parlor, or his wife's pleasure in the drawing-room. Master Tom had, in a rage, torn her best lace cap, threatened to throw her shawl on the fire, and kicked her shins. The free-born spirit of an English nurse could not brook such treatment. "Did Master Tom fancy she was one of his black nigger slaves?" So, if he kicked, she cuffed; while poor little Fanny was the deepest, if not the only sufferer of the three. What was sport to Gifford and Tom, was to her death. Soothing The buildings were of what is called the Elizadown Tom's passion, pleading and apologizing to bethan age-a phrase which I defy any man to Gifford, and weeping, while, like the Sabine define; though, popularly, it is very well underwomen, she threw herself into the strife, little stood in its application to whatever form of dwellFanny would clasp her brother and address the ing, be it manor-house, farm-house, or parsonage, nurse, whispering, in that voice which no one could that is irregular and antique, graced with tall resist "Poor Tom is so young, dear little fellow clustered chimney stacks, quaint windows, and an -and he has no mamma now to make him good." infinity of intricate adjuncts, forming a picturesque It was then the subdued Gifford's turn to apolo- whole. But, if those arched and lancet windows gize; while Tom himself would volunteer a frater- and doorways, glancing from the rich sylvan garnal kiss, as if already manfully conscious that the niture of ivy and trailing plants, like the bright slightest atonement, on his part, ought to be thank-face of a young beauty half veiled by her dishevelfully received by Fanny. This is a lesson which led ringlets, were of the happy age of Elizabethlittle brothers learn with astonishing facility, even for I hold them of much older date-surely those when it is not directly taught, and sometimes when magnificent trees were of more ancient growth. the very reverse is apparently inculcated.

"Gentle and easy to be entreated," Fanny appeared the obliged party upon all such occasions of general reconciliation; for, to her sweet nature sullenness or unkindness was the bitterest form of suffering. To live surrounded with cold hearts and scowling or averted eyes, was blighting and misery. In the few weeks the children remained with us, Fanny endeared herself to our whole

A grassy vale, or, as probably, a rushy one, a stream, and a few knolls and slight inequalities of surface, formed the groundwork from which this abode of learned leisure and pastoral care had been fashioned out centuries before, and gradually moulded into its present beauty. Episcopalian superintendence had preserved and perfected what Popish taste had projected and so far completed; and Time, with his ripening and mellowing touches, had harmonized the whole.

Both looked as if they had flourished in undisturbed tranquillity for centuries. The old walnut trees, of prodigious size, which stood near the house, were probably finer specimens of their kind than those avenues of beeches leading to the “ willowy brook" and piece of water, (beyond the massy garden walls,) in which the swans, at this hour, appeared floating as in an inverted sky, or as if nestling among the trembling shadows of the

and in such high yet easy and enjoying habitable order-there was such entire freedom, with unobtrusive neatness.

bordering trees. And everything was so trim, | The ladies were now engaged in conversation; and it was from me, to whom she sidled up, that Fanny entreated leave to follow " poor Tom." The leave was instantly granted by Mrs. Bethel; and the children, in the glow of novelty, went out in a group. It was now that my sister eloquently expatiated upon the sweet disposition and affectionate nature of little Fanny, her gentle docility, and remarkable attachment to her little brother. "Poor little creatures! they love each other the better for having nothing else to love!" was her concluding observation, while tears glistened in her eyes. My good sister, perhaps, showed more tenderness than discretion, in thus addressing the future patroness of Fanny; but that lady, a rigid and zealous worshipper of all the family of the Decorums and Proprieties, performed her part to admiration-neither overdoing, nor yet falling short of what ought to be expected from her, or was due to position and circumstances.

My pretty companions were enchanted, as I imagined, with the first view of their future home; but I subsequently discovered that the small delicate spaniel and the greyhound had attracted my friend Tom's regard, while Fanny rejoiced in those troops of doves that, on the roof of the porch and at every "coigne of vantage," were cooing, in drowsy murmurs, as they luxuriously basked in the sun. Truly some small portion of that part of the national wealth called the great tithes of Stockham-Magna, could hardly be better expended than in preserving the beauty and order of this ecclesiastical abode, had it been no more than as a picture and ornament to the neighborhood. Dear, good, and haply honest and enlightened church reformer, wheresoever your zeal may carry the besom and direct the ploughshare, do, in the name of natural taste and gentle antiquity, spare me the Rectory of Stockham-Magna! By the memory of the hundreds of solemn festivals and holyday tides, and of the wakes and processions which it has witnessed-by the ever fresh beauty of that terraced garden-by those clipt monster yews, and that box-hedge, broad and high as the walls of ancient Babylon, the wonder and pride of the county-by that quaintly-carved, heavy dial, with its rich and cumbrous masonry-by all this, and by the mightier conjuration of the memory of good men's feasts, and of those social charities which, long gathering in a hundred fold, dispensed at the rate of ten or five-spare me this one cosie nest of the life called holy and the leisure named learned; this pleasant land of drowsyhead, where a succession of mild, gentlemanly persons for generations lived a tranquil, elegant, semi-sensual life, undisturbed by Methodists, Ranters, Radical prints, and the Schoolmaster :-spare me but this one memorial of the times when as yet the reverential peasantry had not surmised, that warmer affec-adventures. Nature had stamped him a bold, restion for their pigs and corn-sheaves emanated from the Rectory, than for either the comfort of their bodies or the care of their souls.

The appearance of a lady's cap, at one of the embowered lower windows, must have recalled the wandering attention of little Fanny, and the noise of the chaise-wheels on the instant brought all the Bethels of Stockham-Magna to the porch, to welcome the orphans of Allahbad. "Oh, Tom, do be a good boy!" whispered Fanny, kissing him, as she anxiously adjusted his shirt frill, and shaded back his hair, while the carriage drew up.

"Aunt Bethel" performed her part very well. She received the orphans in her maternal arms with good and graceful effect; spoke not too much; and, while she gave her hand to my sister, suppressed the starting tears. Fanny pressed her lips to the lady's hand in her own sweet fashion; and, alarmed at Tom's sturdy backwardness, whispered, in her pretty imperfect English, her wonted apologetic-Tom is so young, poor little fellow! -and he has no mamma now to make him good." Every one was melted. Her two cousins, Harriet and Fanny, affectionately kissed "Allahbad Fanny," and shook hands, almost in spite of him, with Tom, whom their brother Henry soon carried off on some boyish quest-Fanny's eyes anxiously following them, as if she were afraid that her turbulent charge might, in some way, compromise himself with these new friends, even in the first hour.

Our stay, which was to have been for a fortnight, was with difficulty prolonged to a week. My sister, upon hearing that some of her children had colds, affected fully as much home-sickness as she really felt; for the studious observance of every right of hospitality, and the most scrupulous politeness, did not compensate for a certain feeling of restraint, a lack of that frank, social, cordiality which it is much easier to understand than to explain. Our mutual sympathy on these points, and our affection for the orphan children, made us both sedulous though tacit observers of the characters of those among whom they were thrown.

In the disputes which early arose between the boys, though Mrs. Dr. Bethel, like a female Brutus, gave judgment against her own son, on consideration of Tom being a spoilt child, of little more than half his age, it was easy to see to which side her heart inclined. Then Tom, with his tricks and wilfulness, kept her in a state of perpetual nervous apprehension. He was forever in perils or scrapes, and seducing his cousins into like

olute, daring imp; and his five months' voyage had confirmed the tendency. Now he was tumbling into the pond; now embarking in tubs on voyages of discovery; next plunging into the dogkennel, or running among the horses' feet; and encouraging Henry to climb the walnut trees, up into which the unbreeched urchin would leap like a squirrel, laughing at the screams and remonstrances of nurse-maids and cousins.

But Fanny was naturally as tractable as Tom was rebellious. It was astonishing how soon she learned, as if by instinct, that she was to have no will, no property, no pleasure, that was not at the sufferance and mercy of her cousins; because her name-sake, Frances, was "such a child," and Harriet's health "was so delicate." It was equally astonishing how quickly Tom, as if by a similar instinct, constituted himself her champion, and did battle for her rights, in the nursery or the garden, in spite of herself, and long before he understood the language of those around him who were invading them.

Among the toys which Fanny had brought from London, was a Dutch milk woman in complete costume, which Harriet, who loved everything that was novel, and admired whatever was not her own, appropriated without much ceremony; and which Tom reclaimed with even less. In the struggle, the Dutch lady was denuded, and Harriet, who was at the age when children shed their

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