hazel eyes. Grecian nose, what a winsome girl!—and let me see, she takes off a glove—yes, is wearing an engagement ring: a lucky fellow, for she must be good with those eyes and that merry smile. Daughter of a doctor or clergyman who died before he could provide for his family; a teacher, one guesses, and to-day off duty, going to meet her fiancé in the city; and then the three—her mother, that dear woman with hair turning grey—will go upon the river, and come home in the sweet summer evening, full of content. As soon as he gets a rise in the office they will marry, and she will also have her gift, as every woman should. But where am I now?—let that Baby bear the blame. 

 We had one vacant place, and that was how the old gentleman intruded on our peace; but let me make every excuse for him. It is aggravating to stand on the edge of the pavement and wave your umbrella ostentatiously to a'bus which passes you and draws up fifteen yards ahead, to make your dangerous way along a slippery street with hansoms bent upon your life, to be ordered to “hurry up,” by an impatient conductor and ignominiously hauled on to a moving 'bus. For an elderly man of military appearance and short temper it was not soothing, and he might have been excused a word or two, but he distinctly exceeded. 

 He insisted in language of great directness and simplicity that the conductor had seen him all the time; that if he didn't he ought to have been looking; that he—the Colonel—was not a fox-terrier to run after a'bus in the mud; that the conductor was an impertinent scoundrel, and that he would have him dismissed, with other things and words unworthy even of a retired Anglo-Indian. The sympathy of the'bus did not go out to him, and when he forced himself in between the lawyer and Grannie, and, leaning forward with his hands on his cane, glared at us impartially, relations were strained. A cut on his left cheek and a bristly white moustache, half hiding, half concealing a cruel mouth, did not commend the new passenger to a peaceable company. Baby regarded the old man with sad attention, pained at his unlicensed talk, but full of charity, and at last he indicates that his fancy is to examine the silver head of the Colonel's cane. The Colonel, after two moments' hesitation, removes his hands and gives full liberty. On second thoughts, he must have got that cut in some stiff fight; wonder whether he is a V.G. Baby moves the cane back and forwards to a march of his own devising—the Colonel actively assisting. Now that I see it in a proper light, his moustache is soft and sets off the face excellently. Had it not been the cut puckering the corner of the upper lip, that would have been a very sweet mouth for a man, 

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