"And you worked with Willie, I suppose?"

"Yes; but I did it worse than ever; Willie nearly got vexed with me. I was thinking about something Herbert told us." And Clara comforted herself by making a confidence of her trouble about the unknown distant cousins; ending with, "I think that made me a little more clumsy than usual, but it's nearly always the same. Please look at this work, the pattern is all wrong again. I never can do anything well, really and truly well; and I do try."

Clara's desponding and entirely unaffected opinion of her own capabilities was not a very exaggerated one. Her most selfdenying attempts never seemed to result in anything better than the ordinary performances of other people; her studies, after all the time and attention given to them, were seldom up to the mark of Janie's repetition or compositions, carelessly prepared as her lessons invariably were; her music was a mechanical result of so much labour, and so many practisings; even her out-ofdoor amusements, in the way of gardening or croquet, were a standing joke with her pert cousin, who declared, with some truth, that Clara's own particular flower-beds looked like carrot or parsnip beds planted out squarely, by mistake for a kitchengarden, and that in a croquet match, Clara's ball was never seen anywhere, but exactly behind its hoop.

It would be so pleasant to do anything worth doing, really worth doing," ended the girl, in her quiet way that this evening was rather more desponding than usual.

"So it would," said Miss Griffiths, giving her the same consolation that she had just been administering to Willie, with no idea of its appropriateness to herself. So it is Clara. But there are a good many things worth doing; a great many things that may come within your scope, dear child."

"I told Willie something like that, when he was vexed about Frank and Herbert," said Clara, simply; "I had heard you say it. But it isn't quite the same with me, you see. He can do some things well; he is going to do some carvings for the church."

Clara's tone of admiration meant that work for the church would be something worth doing.

"You think you would be satisfied with work like that?" "Oh yes, but I could never do anything so good. I can only try, and I always seem to fail, don't I?"

'Not so often as you fancy, dear. Trying is doing in some cases; honest genuine trying, as I think yours is."

"But it ends in dreadful failures," repeated Clara, with a painful recollection of a faulty exercise, and a piece of music that could not be played even tolerably, and some confused strips of tatting, and Willie's indignant accusations of stupidity.

"Clara! do you remember Longfellow's 'Saint Augustine?'" "Tell it me, please; I tried to learn it by heart, and I couldn't even do that!" said Clara, with a laugh not quite so doleful at this mention of one more of her failures; "I shall like it better if you read it to me."

It was what the pupil called one of her "treats," to reverse the proceedings of the study-hours, and instead of reading to Miss Griffiths, to listen; Janie, on such occasions, being always securely out of hearing of what she would have called stupid or prosy stuff; and Longfellow was Clara's especial pet. "Thank you so much," she said, when the reading came to an end: "Did you think of that because of my complaining? Our pleasures and our discontents," she repeated.

"Not quite for that reason. I think that something nobler in the last verse may mean the thing that you have been talking about, dear. The something that may be given you to do that will be, as you say, really worth doing." "I hope I should do it," sighed Clara doubtfully.

CHAPTER II.

THE VILLAGE HOSPITAL.

There was a room in the Rectory that was only second in Clara's estimation to the old schoolroom at the lodge; and one particular seat was almost as much her individual possession as the low ottoman at home. An old-fashioned cushioned windowseat, from the corner of which she could look on one side into Mrs. Watham's comfortable "snuggery," which was her name for the room where she spent her busiest hours,—and on the other, into a small lawn at the back of the Rectory-house, shut in by a high wall covered with very old ivy. It was not a wide prospect, for, as Janie pertly remarked, there was hardly room for a decent light croquet on the piece of turf; but Clara liked it, for the dark mass of ivy was brightened in summer-time by a little border of Mrs. Watham's gayest flowers, and, even now, though the frosty dew was hanging on dead leaves and stalks of

the few remaining plants, yet some late nasturtiums, climbing the wall, shone out from the dark leaves, so rich of orange or red colours; and just below the breakfast room window two or three surviving dahlias were standing in summer-like shades of gold and white.

Clara took early possession of her window-seat on the morning after Herbert's return.

"I was almost afraid I should be in the way, so early," she explained, timidly. "But I had done my lessons quicker than usual, and I wanted to ask you

Mrs. Watham interrupted her in the abrupt decisive way that was the only drawback to Clara's enjoyment of the freedom of the Rectory; she could not get over her awe of the Rector's wife, needless as it was.

"Not in my way at all, my dear, so long as you don't object to my sitting in my own chair, and working away at my morning's business. Needlework to-day, as you perceive."

"Thank you," said Clara, with a grateful look at the parish work-basket, and the small table, and the quick, business-like movements; it was something to be thankful for, she always felt that any part of such valuable time should be wasted upon her. "I can talk as fast as you like, my dear," proceeded Mrs. Watham, "what is it?"

"It was only at least Herbert told me," began poor Clara, frightened, in spite of her resolutions by the abrupt demand, and getting her senses together more slowly than usual in consequence.

"So Herbert is come," as good-looking, and careless and kindhearted as ever. I don't dislike Herbert, and he may be able to do one good thing perhaps shake up that poor, morbid Willie into a little life. What did he tell you?"

"Something about one of his fellow officers," - stammered Clara, passing over the topic of Herbert's good qualities, "who is a Brakespear."

'Ah, yes; I know!" remarked Mrs. Watham.

"And he says they are in trouble-ruined or something" said Clara getting to the end of her communication in no very clear or grammatical form.

"Ah, yes! I know!" repeated Mrs. Watham, gravely, "it's quite true. I heard of it a few days ago, in a roundabout way, and I wrote to ask for particulars. Poor Everald! Herbert's friend's mother that is;" she concluded, in explanation.

"Herbert said that they were friends of yours," said Clara, with a little more courage, as she saw that Mrs. Watham was thoroughly interested, "and he said his friend told him that I was a kind of relation."

"Quite true, my dear, in a way. The friendship has been interrupted for some years; not forgotten, though. And the relationship-well, that has diverged through three generations; it is not a particularly close one by this time; your great grandmother, my dear-yes, that's it: your great grandmother and my friend's grandmother were sisters,"

Clara looked up with a puzzled face.

"I can't make out what relation I am to them-to Herbert's friend."

"Of course not. Practically you are none," was the answer. "I like to hear about them, though," continued Clara, the subject was interesting her unusually; "will you tell me about them, please?"

"To be sure I will, my dear; if there is anything to tell that you will care to hear, but I question it; we were schoolfellows -Everald Hamilton and I: Herbert's friend's mother, you know. Her mother gave her the name because it sounded well with Hamilton. She must have been a silly woman. And Everald married a Mr. Brakespear; a case of retribution, if ever there was one. Poor Everald Brakespear."

"Have you seen her since ?-have you seen Herbert's friend?" inquired Clara.

"I suppose I have, my dear. I paid Everald a visit some years-thirteen-fourteen years ago; there was a nursery full of boys. I have no doubt Herbert's friend was the biggest, and noisiest, and worst of them. There was one little girl, I remember; I do believe I should have coveted the nursery if those boys had been out of it; I did not object to little Eva-But the boys! Their mother talked as if the nursery were a sort of Paradise-people do sometimes; I called it a bear-garden!"

There was something in the manner of the words that contradicted the apparent want of feeling; and Clara could not help remembering, with some wonder, that the Rector's wife was a great admirer of the ugliest children in the village.

"And you have never seen them since?" she asked; "that little Eva must be nearly grown up now."

"No, my dear, and have heard about as much. Everald writes

to me now and then, and tells me about all the wonderful things that her children are doing-cutting teeth if they are in the nursery, or getting prizes if they are at school, or something wonderful of that sort. And I write to her and having nothing that will interest her I tell her I have got into the way of making my letters short and far between. But I don't forget her, poor Everald! She promises to send me her little Eva soon, for a long visit. You must make friends with her, my dear; she is-let me think-she must be about a year younger than you, you won't mind that?"

"Mind it? oh, I am so glad she is coming," said Clara, with as much genuine pleasure as her shyness at the idea of a stranger would let her feel, though, as she said to herself, she ought not to mind, for Eva Brakespear was really a relation, not a mere stranger.

She would not forget the cousinship; and while Mrs. Watham was giving her as many details as she could remember or imagine of the future visitor, Clara was appropriating the description as of something that she had a claim to.

"You want to know what she is like, my dear? I am afraid I cannot help you much; people change in appearance sometimes, between three and sixteen. At three she was a pretty, white, small child, with long curls, of what her mother used to call golden hair. I called it yellow. Just exactly the sort of atom that people say looks like a fairy. a fairy looks like! I dare say she has grown into a big, redhaired, fat girl; don't be disappointed if she is; I warn you."

As if they knew what

"I don't think I shall be disappointed," said Clara; “and she is a cousin, you know."

"Don't be too anxious to appropriate cousins, my dear," was the unsatisfactory answer. "They are rather a disagreeable possession sometimes."

Clara could find no sympathy with her attempts to fraternise with the unknown Brakespears; she was quite glad to see Mr. Watham come in. It was easier for her to say something that she had had in her mind for the last twelve hours. She was not in so much fear of the Rector as of the Rector's wife; shy as she was, not even her timidity could find anything to be frightened at in the peculiarly gentle look and manner of the grey-haired clergyman-ten years in reality, twenty in appearance, older than Mrs. Watham-who had prepared her for confirmation, helped her in her first attempts at parish work, and