Life's Little Ironies

of her is when she appears in

y, where, if all the dead it contained had stood erect and alive, not one would have known him or

erience should be overreached he had safeguarded with trustees all he possibly could. The completion of the boy's course at the public school, to be followed in due time by Oxford and ordination, had been all previsioned and arranged, an

which was to be hers as long as she chose to live in it. Here she now resided, looking out upon the fragment of lawn in front, and through the railings at the ever-flowing traffic; or, bending forward ov

others who did not interest him at all. He drifted further and further away from her. Sophy's milieu being a suburb of minor tradesmen and under-clerks, and her almost only companions the two servants of her own house, it was not surprising that after her husband's death she soon lost the little artificial tastes she had acquired from him, and became-in her son's eyes-a mother whose mistakes and origin it was his painful lot as a gentleman

travelling anywhere. Nearly two years passed without an event, and still she looked on that suburban road, thinking of

arket. She often saw them creeping along at this silent and dusky hour-waggon after waggon, bearing green bastions of cabbages nodding to their fall, yet never falling, walls of baskets enclosing masses of beans and peas, pyramids of snow-white turnips, swaying howdahs of mixed produce-creeping along behind aged night-horses, who seemed ever patiently wondering between their hollow cou

anied a waggon-load of potatoes gazed rather hard at the house-fronts as he passed, and with a curious emotion she thought his form was familiar to her. She looked out for him again. His being an old-fashioned conveyance, wit

ismal situation lent an interest to his resurrection-a tender interest which it is impossible to exaggerate. She went back to bed, and began thinking. When did these market-gardeners, who travelled up

shining full upon her. She affected to sew, but her eyes never left the street. Between ten and eleven the desired wa

' cri

called to him a little boy to hold the horse,

Sam, or I would!' she said.

lived along here somewhere. I

Covent Garden with waggon-loads of produce two or three times a week. In answer to her curious inquiry, he admitted that he had come to this particular district because he had seen in the Aldbrickham paper, a year or two before, the a

as children. She tried to feel that she was a dignified personage now, that she must not be too confident

, Mrs. Twycott, I'

lost my husband only

ther way. You'd lik

long for home-our home! I should like to be there, and never leave it, and die there.' But she remembe

ose? I see there's lots

d holes! At a public school-one of

forget, ma'am, that you've b

I never shall be. But he's a gentleman,