quality of mind, Mrs. Markland was living, in some degree, the very
life that seemed so unattractive to him, and receiving her measure
of reward. While he wandered, with an unquiet spirit, over his
fields, or sat in cool retreats by plashing fountains, his thoughts
reaching forward to embrace the coming future, she was active in
works of love. Her chief desire was the good of her beloved ones,
and she devoted herself to this object with an almost entire
forgetfulness of self. Home was therefore the centre of her thoughts
and affections, but not the selfish centre: beyond that happy circle
often went out her thoughts, laden with kind wishes that died not
fruitless.

The family of Mr. Markland consisted of his wife, four children, and
a maiden sister--Grace Markland,--the latter by no means one of the
worst specimens of her class. With Agnes, in her seventh year, the
reader has already a slight acquaintance. Francis, the baby, was two
years old, and the pet of every one but Aunt Grace, who never did
like children. But he was so sweet a little fellow, that even the
stiff maiden would bend toward him now and then, conscious of a
warmer heart-beat. George, who boasted of being ten--quite an
advanced age, in his estimation--might almost be called a thorn in
the flesh to Aunt Grace, whose nice sense of propriety and decorum
he daily outraged by rudeness and want of order. George was boy all
over, and a strongly-marked specimen of his class--"as like his
father, when at his age, as one pea to another," Aunt Grace would
say, as certain memories of childhood presented themselves with more
than usual vividness. The boy was generally too much absorbed in his
own purposes to think about the peculiar claims to respect of age,
sex, or condition. Almost from the time he could toddle about the
carpeted floor, had Aunt Grace been trying to teach him what she