tell me what I shall make your frocks of?"

Whilst Emma was making friends with her little niece, Mrs. Robert Watson herself arrived. She received her sisters-in-law with more cordiality than Emma expected from the epithet applied to herself, which the child had just betrayed. In fact she was rather pleased than otherwise at this accession to her family; she felt that she had secured a careful assistant to the cook in Elizabeth, who was well versed in the mysteries of pastry and custards, cakes, jellies, and raised pies; and in Emma she hoped to find a competent nursery-governess who would relieve her of all cares as to the child, and supply, unsalaried, the place of the nurse-maid, to whom, under this impression, she had already given warning.

After chatting some time with them, she rang for the house-maid to show them to their rooms, and the child declared she would accompany them as aunt Emma's room was close to the nursery. And so Emma found it was, for she was shown into a small closet containing a bed with room to walk round it, an old chest of drawers and a high stool. This was her apartment. There was no chimney, and the window looked out upon a small space of flat leads, surmounted by high, black, tiled roofs. It had commenced raining since they entered the house, and the gurgle of the water in the gutter, and drip from the window on the leads had a peculiarly monotonous sound. Emma looked at the forlorn and cheerless closet, and felt she was a beggar indeed. She hoped, however, that when her boxes and books were brought up she should be able to make it a little more comfortable; at least she had it to herself, and should be able to pass her time there in peace.

Her niece dragged her off to see the nurseries—the two rooms devoted to her occupied the rest of that floor, they were spacious and in every respect comfortable, except that they were littered with playthings which their owner apparently had not learnt to value.

As it drew near to the dinner-hour Emma ventured down stairs, and found her brother and his wife in the parlour. Robert received her in his usual manner: in another moment her two sisters entered, and they sat round the fire whilst waiting for dinner.

"I hope you like your rooms, girls," said Mrs. Watson; "I thought it would not matter putting Elizabeth and you together, Margaret, because I know it's only for a time. I have heard—a little bird whispered to me a certain story which you need not blush about—of a certain young man—I know who—and I am sure I congratulate you: when did you hear 

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