at full length, and produced the most hideous and unearthly noise ever heard; and who, on being rebuked by the conductor, handed up his part for inspection, observing, amid the unrestrained laughter of the band, that that was the nearest he could come to the note Miss Piper had written for him, which was some half octave below the usual compass of his instrument. Of this, and many another similar story, Miss Piper and Miss Piper's friends knew nothing. But May, remembering them, looked at the two old ladies as they marched into the room with an interest not so wholly reverential as might have been wished.

They were both short, fat, snub-nosed little women, with wide smiling mouths, and double chins. Miss Patty was rather shorter, rather fatter, and rather more snub-nosed than her gifted sister. But the chief difference between the two, which struck one at first sight, was that whereas Miss Piper's own grey locks were disposed in a thick kind of curl, like a plethoric sausage, on each side of her face, Miss Patty wore a pale, gingerbread-coloured wig. Why, having all the wigmaker's stores to choose from, she should have chosen just that particular hue, May secretly wondered as she looked at her. But so it was. And if she had worn a blue wig, it could scarcely have been more innocent of any attempt to deceive the beholder. Both ladies wore good substantial silk gowns, and little lace caps with artificial flowers in them. But the remarkable feature in their attire was the extraordinary number of chains, beads, and bracelets with which they had festooned themselves. And, moreover, these were of a severely mineralogical character. Round Miss Patty's fat, deeply-creased throat, May counted three necklaces:—One of coral, one of cornelian, and the third a long string of grey pebble beads which dangled nearly to her waist. Miss Polly wore—besides a variety of other nondescript adornments which rattled and jingled as she moved—a set of ornaments made apparently of red marble, cut into polygonal fragments of irregular length. Their rings too, which were numerous, seemed to be composed for the most part of building materials; and each sister wore a mosaic brooch which looked, May thought, like a bit out of the tesselated pavement of the smart new Corn Exchange in the High Street.

It did not take that young lady's quick perception long to make all the foregoing observations. Indeed, she had completed them within the minute and a half which elapsed between the