would have explained it to her, ma'am," added the maid, who was very gentle in her manner; "but, really, Miss talked so all the way home, that I could hardly get in a single word, much less an explanation. Miss does not mean any harm by it, ma'am, I am sure of that: she was in charming spirits; and when she is, her tongue never stops."

Fanny looked abashed; and her mamma lectured her with great kindness upon this fresh evidence of the danger of her bad habit. She shed a few tears, and promised to be more careful; but such was her love of chattering, that in less than an hour I heard her again talking to the parrot that hung in the hall;;—a gay, merry bird it used to be, and formerly it said a great many words; but I dare say Mary Browne understood the cause of its late silence. She told me, just before the family returned to the country, that "Miss Fanny talked it dumb."

Mary Browne was, as I have said, a very nice servantclean, active, orderly, respectful, and well-mannered; she was what a good and faithful servant always is, a great treasure; and her mistress brought up her children so well, that they treated all the servants, but particularly Mary Browne, with civility and kindness. The young lady who gave her the most trouble was Chatterbox; not only from her incessant talking, but from the various scrapes she got herself and others into by never "thinking twice before she spoke once."

This "Think twice before you speak once, and you will speak twice the better for it," was as favourite a maxim of Mary Browne's, as "Young ladies should be seen before they are heard" is of mine; but often as she repeated it to little Fanny, still Fanny talked, and talked not only without thinking

twice before she spoke once, but without thinking at all. The old manor-house of Eltham, where Fanny's papa and mamma reside the greater part of the year, is just at the end of the village which bears the same name. A beautiful old village it is there is a river so full of trout, that on a summer evening you can see them leaping out of the water at the little grey thoughtless flies that go pleasuring along its surface, never dreaming of danger; and though one fly sees its brother or sister swallowed by a gaping fish, it never has the sense to keep where the fish cannot reach it. This river is crossed by two bridges: one a wide stone bridge of three arches, which leads into the village and to Eltham House; the other is only a little foot bridge of a couple of planks; you can see them from the wide bridge, spanning, as it were, the river where it is narrowest from bank to bank, protected at either side by a good stout rope. This little bridge is much used by the peasants who live near the common when they want to get quickly to that end of the village where the doctor and the curate live, and where the market is held on Saturdays. There is an old church, whose tower is crowned by ivy; and in that ivy dwell two old owls-white fellows, with huge, green, monster eyes: the inside of the belfrey is alive with bats, sparrows nestle beneath the eaves of the old roof: the churchyard is filled with humble graves, always green, and, in the summer, bright with starry-eyed daisies, and fragrant with the perfume of wild violets. Even Chatterbox is silent when she passes through that beautiful old churchyard; and people come to look at an old yew-tree which flourishes there though it is nearly three hundred years old. But Fanny and her sisters like the broad common,