You've altered all your ways to please him-you've refused one of the best chaps in the world-and a thundering good offer too-because of him. Why, you've even altered the way you do your hair, and a precious guy you've made of yourself, to suit him."

"Am I to wear a fringe all my life because Chloe can't wear a parting?" said Anne.

"You can shave your head for all I care," I cried. "I don't know what's come to you, you never used to be like this. If your head's so turned by Lyndhurst's flattery that you can't listen to a friendly word of advice from your own brother, I'm sorry for you. I wish to goodness I'd never brought him to the house."

"Because he didn't happen to fall in love with Chloe?" said Anne sweetly.

What are you to say to a girl like that? For my part I confined myself to one word and walked out of the room-leaving Anne looking at herself in the glass with the utmost satisfaction.

Is this a very vulgar story? Perhaps we were very vulgar (most people are when you come to think of it), but we were also very human-especially Anne who came down that night in a kind of dressing-gown arrangement tied in the middle like a bolster.

"Why on earth has Anne got on that nightgown?" I asked Chloe after din

ner.

Chloe laughed until she nearly made herself ill.

"Fifteen guineas at Liberty's!" she gasped.

"For goodness' sake, make Anne go upstairs and take that thing off," I said to my mother.

"Oh! my dear, I wouldn't do such a thing for the world-she looks so pretty and... and she's so happy."

"Gracious!" cried Chloe, jumping up from the floor where she lay with her

head in my mother's lap-"has he proposed?"

"No, my dear-not in so many words but he has given her to understand" -my mother fluttered her pretty hands

"he has given her an ornament he specially designed for her. She came to my room before dinner and asked if she might keep it-dear Anne, she is always so good! I don't approve of that sort of thing, you know, my dears; your dear father never gave me anything until we were properly engaged but I hadn't the heart to refuse her -and of course things are different nowadays and one must go with the times-and," here my mother smiled at us deprecatingly, “and the ornament could not have cost very much."

Chloe doubled herself up with delight. "Oh, you darling!" said she, flinging her arms round our mother and hugging her "you dear, adorable old darling-what a sweet up-to-date, nineteenth century old parent it's getting, to be sure! How much do you suppose it cost, Mummy?-One and elevenpence halfpenny at Peter Robinson's, or fourpence three farthings at Whiteleys?"

"Oh, my dear," said my mother, "it's not the gift but the giver that Anne values."

"Then it's only fourpence three farthings," said Chloe flippantly. "Tell us, Mummy-is he going to propose?"

My mother's delicate face flushed all over. "Chloe darling!" she exclaimed, "how can you ask? He is only waiting until dear Anne gives him the opportunity."

"Ahem!" said Chloe, "then in that case I should advise dear Anne not to keep him waiting long."

"I'm sure I can't think what Chloe can mean," said my mother to me afterwards in great perplexity; "why, I've never seen anything like Guy's devotion to dear Anne in all my life. I think it is something beautiful."

It was. Most beautiful, from a romantic point of view-but then, I am not a romantic person-and as week after week went by and still Anne did not "give Lyndhurst his opportunity," I began to wish Lyndhurst and Anne at the bottom of the Red Sea.

To tell the plain truth, they became a perfect nuisance. I said a little while ago there were plenty of sitting-rooms in the house; there were, but after a time Lyndhurst and Anne overflowed into every one of them. Needless to say, he had at once begun painting her, and before very long you couldn't walk a yard without running into an easel and a half-finished portrait of Anne.

I'm not saying the sketches weren't clever; they were, exquisitely clever, even in their unfinished state, but the smell of the paint was abominable, and as Lyndhurst "passed" from room to room "chasing the mood," it ended by the entire family assembling in the dining-room, and in the midst of reminiscent odors of departed beef and mutton, offering up prayers for Anne's speedy vouchsafing of Lyndhurst's "opportunity."

One evening, for the first time since he had been in the house, Lyndhurst came into the smoking-room after dinner and requested whiskey and a cigarette. I attended to his wants, and then prepared to listen preparatory to offering him my blessing.

For a long time he sat without speaking, then he got up and helped himself again to whiskey.

"Poor chap," thought I, "screwing himself up to the point."

"The whiskey is not too bad," said Lyndhurst, in his affable way, "but the cigarettes are abominable." He lighted a second as he spoke, sank into his chair, closed his eyes and again relapsed into silence. I sat watching him, thinking how confoundedly handsome the fellow was, and wondering what kind of settlements he would be pre

pared to make, when suddenly he threw away his second cigarette and lighted a third.

"Nervous?" I said.

He moved his head restlessly. "Au bout de mes forces."

In certain moods Lyndhurst invariably relapses into French-purest Parisian-(he can speak all languages under the sun) but to me intensely aggravating.

"That's bad," I said, "what's wrong?"

The third cigarette followed the second. "It's your sister," he said irritably. He broke off again and struck a match. There was no mistake about it, his hand was trembling. Since the days of disillusion I had never felt towards him so kindly.

"My sister Anne?" I suggested feelingly.

"No, no," he said, "the other one. The little one with the fin-de-siècle face and the old world name."

"Chloe?" I shouted, starting to my feet?

Lyndhurst smiled ineffably. "Chloe," said he, and shut his eyes.

I sat down again and gasped. Chloe! Then what about the last six weeks? what about the sunflowers? what about the Liberty gown? what about the understanding? what about Anne?

Anne, who was waiting outside trembling and blushing while we talked "horrid business." Anne, standing in the moonlight among the roses until I called her in. . . . To congratulate Chloe and her lover! The thing was impossible! Monstrous!

But Lyndhurst was speaking again. "I had been too absorbed before," he said, "but she is charming! Charming! That little velvet band at her wrist against the up-to-date dress, like her face and name, a sweet contradiction. I should like to paint her as a symbol, holding the hands of the two centuries, and her feet-she has really

charming feet-trampling on Time. Just hands, and a smile and a footprint in the dust." He turned his brilliant eyes on me. "She is quite right," he said, "I have been dallying too long -the primrose path-the primrose path! I must come to the point." The light of his smile mocked the lamplight shining on his face. "It's the sun," he said, "I've been overbold and Apollo is jealous. This is his revenge." The smile died away and left him suddenly old and haggard. "The work is bad," he cried with a gesture of despair.

"The work!" I cried, "the work. that the trouble?"

Is

"What else?" said he, regarding me with sombre eyes. "What else in the world could trouble me? The work is bad, bad!"

"Nonsense, my dear fellow," I cried, "nonsense! The work is beautiful, splendid, gorgeous, the best that you've ever done in your life! I think so, everybody thinks so, Anne thinks so. Look." I went to the window and held aside the curtain. "There's a picture for you if you like. If you're not satisfied with Clytie worshipping the sun, paint Clytie worshipping the moon!" I lifted my hand and Lyndhurst came forward and looked over my shoulder at Anne. Anne in her white Liberty gown with her hands folded over her breast and a rapt look on her lifted face as of one who sees visions. "She's my own sister," said I, "but by Jove she's worth painting! Man alive, she's beautiful!"

Lyndhurst drew his breath with a shuddering gasp of delight. "Beautiful," he whispered, "beautiful! She's divine! and I smoking a cigarette, polluted wretch that I am, and thinking of decadent art, and the frou-frou of flame-colored petticoats, while she " He grasped my arm and shook it in his excitement. "Our eyes are holden that we may not see," he said hoarsely,

I did not follow Lyndhurst's suggestion and return thanks to the Creator for my sister Anne's face (the ecstacy on it as she turned to greet him made me ashamed to look at her) but I did offer up a very sincere prayer for her happiness, which seemed to me the thing which most needed praying for; then having watched with considerable edification the installation of the easel and the posing of Anne, I went in search of Chloe.

That "sweet contradiction," as Lyndhurst called her, was sitting in a last century attitude on a corner of the billiard table studying an unmistakably up-to-date nineteenth century book.

As I entered she turned to me, her face alight with expectation. "Well?" she said. "Well?" I wagged my head at her with elderly brotherly solemnity. "What does he say?" said Chloe eagerly.

"He says your hands are strong enough to hold two centuries at a time," I said gloomily.

Chloe darted a glance at her absurd little hands glittering with rings, then her eyes came back to my face. "Don't be so silly. What did he say?"

"He says your feet are big enough to trample on Old Time."

Chloe darted a glance at her ridiculous little feet in their dainty Queen Anne shoes-and again her eyes returned to my face. "Don't fool, there's a dear boy. I want to know really. What did he say?"

"That the sun's jealous of him," I said grimly, "so he's going to turn his attention to the moon."

M. D.

Almost from the time of her marriage her late Majesty Queen Victoria was a practical and successful farmer. Her "occupations," to use the business word, were not mere bits of the Royal estates, on which to produce butter and cream for the household. Home farms in this sense generally do not pay, and in the old days it was considered ungenteel to make them pay. Hers were genuine farms, for which she paid rent, so that she entered and maintained them under the same difficulties and conditions as the majority of agriculturists in England. The history of these is given at considerable length by the agricultural papers, especially by the Field and the Live Stock Journal, which justly note that during the long retirement of the Queen from public life she never lost touch with the great industry of agriculture, and maintained undiminished her control of the farms, which the Prince Consort had first jointly undertaken with her, and her interest in the great shows and other public efforts made to improve implements, crops and cattle.

Reading these notes, it is impossible not to be struck with the degree in which the Queen and her husband were "before the world" in this inter

est in the beasts of the farm and the crops of the fields. Now it is a fashionable amusement with the rich. Then, when agriculture was only recovering from the losses of the early parts of the century, it was a bold thing even for a Queen to be a practical agriculturist. Society would have laughed at failure. Success would only be esteemed by the unfashionable and little-known farmers of rural England. The farms which her late Majesty held for the longest time, and which became widely known, were at Windsor. They are not large, considering the wonderful success of the animals bred there. One, Shaw Farm, is a grazing farm with only one hundred and twenty acres of arable. The other, the Flemish Farm, covers four hundred acres, of which two hundred and forty are arable. They are cultivated "exactly as the shrewd and practical Prince Albert settled that they ought to be half a century ago." The whole management has been on a serious business system, and the Queen insisted that this, which was also arranged by Prince Albert, should be strictly adhered to. The land has been made to yield good crops, yet kept unexhausted, and so long as arable farming and corn were likely to pay this