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man did the heavy work; it had even survived the unpacking which, it is true, was principally done by Mrs. Lauriston and Agatha, with Martin's assistance.

But since then Mr. Lauriston had had time to observe things more minutely. He agreed that the spot deserved all the praises which his City friend had bestowed on it; there were fine trees all round, the stream at his feet flowed clear and not too deep over a gravel bed, and in that umbrageous corner the ladies could bathe unseen and, equally important, without fear of drowning; the noise of the distant, weir came pleasantly on the evening air. But there was something lacking; something was different from what he remembered of camping out in the days of his youth. A strange feeling almost of loneliness came over him, and shaking himself a little he rose from the stone on which he had been sitting and returned to the encampment where he found the ladies ready for the evening meal. Mr. Lauriston remembered with something like a pang that it was called supper.

Then ensued the short dialogue recorded, and Mr. Lauriston's face fell. The prospect before him should have been enchanting. Yielding to her younger niece's importunity Aunt Charlotte had decided that, as it was so warm, they might safely sup in the open air and not in the tent that had been erected as a living and store-room. A low sun sent mild beams through the willows on their right, and touched the forks and spoons lying on the white table-cloth with points of fire. Smooth turf, the girls had decided, was a much nicer table than the wooden one in the tent, and they had spread out the viands pic-nic fashion. Aunt Charlotte had insisted on having a camp-stool, declaring that she was much too old to sit on the ground, though indeed age was a thing that she carried so lightly

as to make it doubtful. Beside her reclined her niece, Cicely Neave, whose dark eyes were fixed on Mr. Lauriston in mischievous amusement. Her elder sister, Agatha, was busily cutting a loaf. The fifth of the party, a friend of the two girls, sat gazing dreamily at the sunlit waters, prettily completing the circle.

But Mr. Lauriston regarded none of these things. His gaze was fixed on a plain tumbler which had just been filled with water. "Aunt Charlotte didn't

forget the filter," said Cicely reassuringly.

"And I had it boiled, too," added Aunt Charlotte with slight self-appreciation.

"Boiled!" ejaculated Mr. Lauriston.

"It's always safest," Aunt Charlotte explained. "Probably the well is all right, but one never knows."

"You see she never forgets anything," said Cicely, whose air showed that she expected Aunt Charlotte's lord and master to express satisfaction.

"Except my wine," grumbled Mr. Lauriston, "and I had made a most careful selection."

"It was so heavy," answered his wife, "that I decided not to bring it. You will be all the better for simple fare. After a day in the City perhaps a glass of wine"

It suddenly came upon Mr. Lauriston with the force of a revelation that he was the only man there. The femininity of his circle had never impressed itself so before. He decided to rebel. "Martin," he called. Martin came out of the store-tent. "Is there nothing to drink?"

Cicely pointed reproachfully to his glass, and as this had no effect, "There are two kinds of lemonade," she began, "and lime-juice, and-" but Mr. Lauriston ignored her for once and repeated his question.

Martin confessed to having some stout not included in Mrs. Lauriston's

catalogue, and a bottle of this was set before the rebel, with the happy effect of restoring him almost to good humor. "And what have you young ladies been doing while we unpacked?" he asked more cheerfully as he carved the pie that lay before him. "Have you found some likely subjects, Miss Doris?"

The girl withdrew her dreamy eyes from the landscape and accepted the plate which he offered her. "I found some sweet cottages," she said, "all over honeysuckle and roses, and such a quaint little church, with the funniest old sexton who told me he had lived in the village man and boy for seventythree years, and said he never wanted to go away from it. I sat down on a bench in the porch and watched him pulling up weeds from the churchyard path. It was all so restful and simple that I began to wonder why we ever live in cities."

Mr. Lauriston hardly felt equal to a discussion of the suggested subject; instead, he asked Cicely what she had been doing. "I, too, was wondering why we did not live more alone with Nature," she answered in evasive imitation of her friend's more dreamy

manner.

"That means you've been doing nothing as usual," said Agatha with sisterly sternness.

"I have been watching the fish leap in the river; I have seen the clouds

"Oh, yes," interrupted Agatha. “We know her, don't we, Uncle Henry? She brought her rug to this knoll directly we had had our tea, and here she's been ever since."

"And you wanted us to have supper outside," chuckled Mr. Lauriston. "So you got us to bring supper to you, eh, Cicely?"

"I didn't think there was a prettier place," she pleaded, but this was not accounted to her for merit. And Ne

mesis was to fall on her from Aunt Charlotte.

"Why, child," she cried, "you don't mean to say you've been lying on the damp ground with only a rug all these hours?" Cicely had to confess, though she feebly disputed the dampness. "You'll get rheumatism, my dear, or something dreadful. You must get up directly, and run and fetch a waterproof to put under the rug. Run, it will make you warm."

"Agatha packed our things and she won't like me to disturb them," objected Cicely; "and I'm quite warm already, thank you, Aunt." She fanned herself gently with a tiny pockethandkerchief to prove that if anything she was too warm. "But," she added as a concession, "I'll put some more pepper on Uncle Henry's potatoes, if you like." However, she had to get up, whereupon Mr. Lauriston resigned his mackintosh, and Martin supplied him with a camp-stool.

It was Agatha's turn next. She, it appeared, had taken quite a long walk along a lane coming back by the river. She had seen something in the distance that looked like a house-boat.

"A house-boat?" echoed Mrs. Lauriston. "I hope it isn't anywhere near here. Did you see any people on it?" No, Agatha did not think it was very near, though the lock and back-water made it all very confusing; and she had not seen any people on it; she had not given the matter much attention. Mr. Lauriston extracted the information that a field with cows in it had lain between her and nearer vision.

"I did see a man on the other side of the river," she admitted, "but I shouldn't think he had anything to do with the house-boat; he didn't look that sort of person."

"A man?" repeated Mr. Lauriston with interest, and he pressed Agatha for a description; but beyond noticing that the stranger looked rather dis

reputable and was fishing, she had not studied him.

"I trust," said Aunt Charlotte, "that that house-boat does not mean that there are a lot of people about. Didn't Mr. Hobbs tell you that we should be quite alone here, that it was a place where no one ever came?" She looked aggrieved interrogation at her husband.

Mr. Lauriston answered her that it was so. "But perhaps Martin knows," he added, calling to him.

Martin appeared with another bottle of stout and a cork-screw. Aunt Charlotte's eye, however, convinced him that they were not needed. "Have you seen anything of a house-boat anywhere near here?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," returned Martin. "There's one lying in the main river above the lock; I saw it as I was fetching the milk, an' a young gentleman asleep on top of it."

Mr. Lauriston's eye brightened involuntarily. "What did he look like?" he asked.

"Well, sir, I couldn't see 'm very plain, 'is 'at being all over 'is face, but he looked a very respectable gentleman. Very respectable 'e looked," repeated Martin meditatively. "It quite put me in mind of Ealing," he added, willing to say as much good of the stranger as honesty permitted.

"Some horrid cockney!" interjected Mrs. Lauriston. "Did you see any one else?"

"Yes, ma'am, as I was comin' back, there was four or five of them a' sittin' 'avin' their tea at a trestle-table on the bank. They wasn't so respectable as the other though." The appearance of the slumbering Charles had impressed Martin, as being the last thing that was to be expected in the wilds of the country.

Mr. Lauriston was about to say something when he caught a glimpse of his wife's face; it had settled into an expression of stony displeasure which

convinced him that his intended remark would fall on unsympathetic ears. "It won't do at all," she said firmly. "We can't camp out within a hundred yards of a lot of young men who for all we know may be criminals in disguise on a house-boat."

"They're much farther away than that," said Mr. Lauriston, wondering inwardly what plan his wife had in her mind and how best he should combat it.

"Well, a hundred and fifty yards," conceded Aunt Charlotte. "The best plan, Henry, will be for you to go the first thing to-morrow morning and tell them to go away. It's too late tonight, I suppose," she added half regretfully.

Mr. Lauriston gasped and looked round the circle for aid; but the faces of the young ladies also expressed alarmed horror at the idea of four or five criminals in disguise within easy reach. With the pitilessness of youth Agatha said that there was no time like the present, and would not Uncle Henry go at once? It was not so very late.

"But, my dear," he protested, addressing his wife, "what earthly right

"It is not a question of right," said Mrs. Lauriston with dignity. "You will explain to them,-quite politely, of course that there are ladies here who object to their presence, and I should hope their good feeling would show them what to do."

"Even if they are criminals disguised as house-boats," said Cicely, with an air of adding something to the discussion.

Mr. Lauriston looked at her for a moment, half hoping that he had found an ally. But Cicely's face was still in decorous sympathy with the atmosphere of unqualified hostility to the unknown. It seemed to him that the circle had become more feminine than

ever, and a swift succession of pictures flashed before his mind's eye, pictures of Samson, Hercules, and other famous victims of female tyranny; he was just about to add himself to the gallery when by a blessed chance Henry the Eighth intervened, and the memory of that monarch's bluff, hearty methods came to him as a happy precedent for asserting the moral dignity of

man.

"My dear," he said firmly, "the thing You is impossible on the face of it. might just as well ask me to go and tell his Majesty the King that Windsor Castle is too near Ealing, and that you would be glad if he would move it into Yorkshire." Mr. Lauriston was rather pleased with his loyal simile; he felt that he was in a sense repaying to the throne of England the debt of courPerage that he had just incurred. ceiving that his words had had some small effect on Cicely he continued: "Besides, how do you know that these are at all undesirable? young men Martin said they looked very respectable."

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"Only one of them," said Agatha; "and criminals very often look spectable."

"My dear child," retorted Mr. Lauriston, "what do you know about criminals?" Agatha's knowledge being limited to an ex-housemaid who had exchanged her aunt's silver spoons for whisky not destined for general use, he felt that he had marked a point.

"Whether they are criminals or not is quite beside the question," said Aunt Charlotte loftily; "and I don't care how respectable they are. But while I am in charge of these girls I am not going to run any risks. If you don't mind your nieces being insulted and pursued, you should remember that Miss Doris Yonge is our guest. She shall not be exposed to that sort of thing."

Aunt Charlotte's mind moved with such rapidity that Mr. Lauriston was

on the point of yielding and joining the lamentable company of Samson and Hercules, but the brave English monarch rescued him once more, and he spoke with the firmness of a man and a householder. "My dear, it will be quite time to bring railing accusations of that sort when you perceive the slightest foundation for them. At present the insults have all been on one side. I have always made it an invariable rule in the City to treat every man as a gentleman unless he proves himself otherwise, and I shall not alter it now."

Mr. Lauriston's valor served him well: it gained him the ally for whom he had looked. Cicely added something more to the discussion. "I don't think disguised house-boats, I mean criminals would sit at a trestle-table and drink tea," she said with conviction.

"Of course not," agreed Mr. Lauriston, though it is to be feared that he looked on Cicely's remark rather as a vote of confidence in himself than as a ponderable argument in his favor. He was encouraged to proceed. "Probably, Charlotte, these young men will not be the slightest inconvenience to Indeed, I should not be surprised if they were just as determined to avoid us, as you are to avoid them. Why should they come to this deserted spot unless they wanted to be

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were wavering. But she did not yield; she moved back to her next trench. "Well, we will move then," she said, "as Agatha suggests."

"Oh, but I didn't," put in that young lady quickly. She thought that flight would be equal to a confession of inferiority, and said so.

Cicely, too, looked alarmed at her Aunt's suggestion. "Aunt Charlotte!" she said reproachfully. "They would laugh at us, to say nothing of all the packing."

"Couldn't we give it a day's trial," suggested Doris, "and see how we get on?"

"Yes," added Cicely, extracting a tiny insect from her pink sherbet with a spoon; "we could go away the next day if we met too many young men Macmillan's Magazine.

about, if we found them in our teacups or anything."

"One should never be in too great a hurry," said Mr. Lauriston.

Aunt Charlotte saw that she was now alone, so she gave way. "Very well," she conceded, "we will give it a trial. But if anything unpleasant happens, Henry, remember we move at once; and perhaps you had better tell Martin not to hold any communication with the people on the house-boat. It might put us in a false position if one of our party were friendly with them, even though it was only Martin."

Mr. Lauriston acquieseced in this; after all Charlotte had been brought round to a comparatively reasonable frame of mind, and he could afford to give way in trifles.

(To be continued.)

THE STATE CHILDREN OF HUNGARY.

When in Vienna some little time ago, I paid a visit one day to the Foundling Hospital, where, in a room quite apart from the rest of the children, I found a handsome little fellow of about two years old installed in state. There was nothing of the forsaken about him, no sign of poverty; on the contrary, he looked the very picture of health and wealth. He was prettily dressed, well supplied with toys, too; evidently he had been tenderly cared for and kept out of harm's way his whole life long; for he smiled up into our faces cheerily, trustfully, as no child who knows the meaning of neglect or ill-treatment ever can smile.

"Oh! he is no foundling; he is a little Magyar," the doctor who was showing me over the institution exclaimed, in reply to an enquiry. "His father brought him here yesterday. He cannot take proper care of him, he says, as he is out of work and his wife is dead.

so he has handed him over to the State. This is the right thing to do now, it seems. We have communicated with the Hungarian Government, and they are sending a special messenger to fetch the boy. This is part of their new Children's Protection system. Now that is an interesting experiment from every point of view, one well worth watching carefully."

I was, as it chanced, on my way to Budapest at the time for the express purpose of seeing how this Children's Protection system was working; but when I heard what the doctor said, I was sorely tempted to change my plans and pass the city by unvisited. For a system under which a father could rid himself of his son as easily as of his worn-out shoe did not appeal to me; it struck me indeed as being one that would entail not only much wasteful expenditure, but demoralization all round. There must be some mistake

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