deo conceditur.'

'Of course. Indeed, with the gods of Olympus it was quite the other way.
Nothing could be more absurd than their goings on.'
Ida was delighted at her friend's happiness, and was never tired of hearing about Mr. Jardine's virtues. Love had already begun to exercise a sobering influence upon Bessie. She no longer romped with the boys, and she wore gloves. She had become very studious of her appearance, but all those little coquettish arts of the toilet which she had learned last autumn at Bournemouth, the cluster of flowers pinned on her shoulder, the laces and frivolities, were eschewed; lest Mr. Jardine should be reminded of the wanton-eyed daughters of Zion, with their tinkling ornaments, and chains, and bracelets, and mufflers, and rings, and nose-jewels. She began to read with a view to improving her mind, and plodded laboriously through certain books of the advanced Anglican school which her lover had told her were good. But she learnt a great deal more from Mr. Jardine's oral instructions than from any books, and when the Winchester boys came home for an occasional Sunday they found her brimful of ecclesiastical knowledge, and at once nicknamed her the Perambulating Rubric, or by the name of any feminine saint which their limited learning suggested. Fortunately for Bessie, however, their jests were not unkindly meant, and they liked Mr. Jardine, whose knowledge of natural history, the ways and manners of every creature that flew, or walked, or crawled, or swam in that region of hill and valley, made him respectable in their eyes.

'He's not half a bad fellow—for a parson,' said Horatio, condescendingly.

'And wouldn't he make a jolly schoolmaster?' exclaimed Reginald. 'Boys would get on capitally with Jardine. They'd never try to bosh him.'

'Schoolmaster, indeed?' echoed Bessie, with an offended air.

'I suppose you think it wouldn't be good enough for him? You expect him to be made an archbishop off-hand, without being educated up to his work by the rising generation. No doubt you forget that there have been such men as Arnold, and Temple, and Moberly. Pray what higher office can a man hold in this world than to form the minds of the rising generation?'

'I wish your master would form your manners,' said Bessie, 'for they are simply detestable.'

It was nearly the end of June, and the song of the nightingales was