A Flat Iron for a Farthing

nt companion for nearly six years I could not fathom at the time. For my own part, I was quite as miserable as I have ever been

fading after the mother and sister whose death (and my own loneliness) I bewailed, that he roused himself from his own grief to comfort mine. Once more I was "dressed" a

the end of the table gave my father a fresh shock when I took my old pos

ech of my nurse's that I had overheard, and which gave me the horrors at the time-"He's got the look! It's his poo

going over all the circumstances of my mother's death and funeral (down to the price of the black paramatta of which her

lay after dinner with my head upon his breast, he stroked my curls with a tend

do for you, my

quickly in

Regie like?"

ow, and spoke out boldly

Mrs. Bundle for a nurse; an

Rubens?" ask

te; and it licked my face when nurse and I were there yesterday, and I put my hand in its mouth, and it rolled over on its

d at my catalogue of marvels-"if Rubens belongs to Mr. Mackenzie, and i

nd I paused, for I feared th

?" said m

hillings for hi

father, "you and I will go and

ied in testing the tricks he knew, and teaching him new ones, I had the less leisure to listen open-mouthed to cadaverous gossip of the Cadman class. Finally, when I had bidden him good-night a hundred times, with absolutely fraternal embraces, I was soothed by

good, and finally, by downright lamentations and tragic inquiries as to what she had done to be parted from her boy, and "could her chickabiddy have the heart to drive away his loving and faithful nursey," that I learned that it was contemplated to supersede her by some one else, and that if she did not know that I was to blame in the matter, she at any

in their mouths is that wicked and cruel underneath?" And then followed a series of nurse's most ghastly anecdotes, relative to fat mothers who had ill-treated their children, fat nur

bservation, but I felt that the warning and the moral were for me. And not e

tation of my brain, I at last resolved to beg my father to let her remain with us. I felt that it was-as she had pointed out-intense ingratitude on my part to wish to part with her,

not so decided before. As to your not liking Mrs. Bundle now-My dear little son, you must learn to know your own mind. You told

indignantly, I wept remorsefully, and then waited in terro

morning, a hymn in bed, and the Church Catechism on Sunday. She snubbed the maids who alluded in my presence to things I could not or should not understand, and she directed her own conversation to me, on matters suitable to my age, instead of talking over my childish head to her gossips. The stories of horror and crime, the fore-doomed babies, the murders, the mysterious whispered communications faded from my untroubled brain. Nurse Bundle's tales were of the young masters and misses she had known. Her worst domestic tragedy was about the boy who broke his leg over the chair he had failed to put away after b

r me. I grew strong, and stout, and we