eyes once more. She was dressed in a last year's summer frock of Miriam's, and her hair was reduced to order; but she had begun to cry so piteously when Lucy began to put stockings upon her, that she gave it up at once, and her legs were still bare. I presume she saw the last remnants of her freedom vanishing in those gyves and fetters.

But nice and clean as she

looked, she certainly had lost something by her decent garments. Poppie must have been made for rags and rags for Poppie-they went so admirably together. And there is nothing wicked in rags or in poverty. It is possible to go in rags and keep the Ten Commandments, and it is possible to ride in purple and fine linen and break every one of them. Nothing, however, could spoil the wildness of those honestly furtive eyes.

Seated beside Lucy at the table, she did nothing but first stare, then dart her eyes from one to another of the company with the scared expression of a creature caught in a trap, and then stare again. She was evidently anything

but comfortable. When Lucy spoke to her she did not reply, but gazed appealingly, and on the point of crying, into her eyes, as if to say, "What have I done to be punished in this dreadful manner?" Lucy tried hard to make her eat, but she sat and stared, and would touch nothing. Her plate, with the wing of a chicken on it, stood before her unregarded. But all at once she darted out her hand like the paw of a wild beast, caught something, slipped from her chair, and disappeared under the table. Peeping down after her, Lucy saw her seated on the floor, devouring the roll which had been put by the side of her plate. Judging it best not to disturb her, she took no more notice of her for some time, during which Poppie, having discovered a long row of resplendent buttons down the front of her dress, twisted them all off, with a purpose manifested as soon as the luncheon was over. When the company rose from their seats, she crawled out from under the table and ran to Miriam, holding out both her hands. Miriam held out her hands to meet Poppie's, and

received them full of the buttons off her own old

frock.

"Oh! you naughty Poppie!" said Lucy, who

had watched her. Why did you cut off the buttons ? Don't you like them ?"

“Oh! golly! don't I just? And so does she. Tuck me up if she don't!"

Poppie had no idea that she had done anything improper. It was not as buttons, but per se, as pretty things, that she admired the knobs, and therefore she gave them to Miriam. Having said thus, she caught at another tommy, as she would have called it, dived under the table again, and devoured it at her ease, keeping, however, a sharp eye upon her opportunity. Finding one, when Lucy, who had remained in the room to look after her, was paying more attention to the party in the garden, she crawled out at the door, left open during the process of taking away, and with her hand on the ponderous lock of the street-door, found herself seized from behind by the porter. She had been too long a pupil of the London streets not to know the real position

of the liveried in the social scale, and for them she had as little respect as any of her tribe. She therefore assailed him with such a torrent of bad language, scarcely understanding a word that she used, that he declared it made his "'air stand on hend," although he was tolerably familiar with such at the "Spotted Dog" round the corner. Finding, however, that this discharge of cuttlefish-ink had no effect upon the enemy, she tried another mode—and with a yell of pain, the man fell back, shaking his hand, which bore the marks of four sharp incisors. In one moment Poppie was free, and scudding. Thus ended her introduction to civilized life.

Poppie did not find it nice. She preferred all London to the biggest house and garden in it. True, there was that marvellous rose-tree. But free-born creatures cannot live upon the contemplation of roses. After all, the thing she had been brought up to, the streets, the kennels, with their occasional crusts, pennies, and bits of glass, the holes to creep into and the endless room for scudding, was better. And her unsuit

able dress, which did attract the eyes of the passers-being such as was seldom seen in connexion with bare hair and legs-would soon accommodate itself to circumstances, taking the form of rags before a week would be over, to which change of condition no care of Poppie's would interpose an obstacle. For like the birds of the

air and the lilies of the field, she had no care.

She did not know what it meant.

And possibly

the great One who made her may have different ideas about respectability from those of dining aldermen and members of Parliament for certain boroughs that might be named.

At the porter's cry, Lucy started, and found to her dismay that her charge was gone. She could not, however, help a certain somewhat malicious pleasure at the man's discomfiture, and the baby-like way in which he lamented over his bitten hand. He forgot himself so far as to call her "the little devil"-which was quite in accordance with his respectable way of thinking. Both Mrs. Morgenstern and Lucy, after the first disappointment and vexation were over, laughed