in

dangerous. The great doctor brought the little lord with his own hands into the nursery; a posse red baby shot with yellow, as babies are apt to be in their first week, and little to be distinguished in that respect from his poorer brother of the Mews. "You may let this tape continue for a few days round his arm, Mrs. Groves, to prevent mistake," said Sir Toby," although indeed he has the Hollis nose, without much doubt, and the chin also." The little infant seemed to smile (unless it was the wind) upon his new mother, and she on her part, woman-like, received him gladly into her arms, while the democratic youth at once took to his bottle as naturally as though he were a grown-up mechanic. Except for some unavoidable yearnings for a mother's privilege, a sense of departed comfort, and of a premature, and even cruel loss perhaps, in the lady of the house, the new order of things was thus established pleasantly enough in Bulbul Square.

"We are all of us born princes," says the keenest-eyed of English poetesses, and Master Birt was no exception to the rule; he kicked against pins and confinement, and squeaked as resolutely for his food when in the humour as any little duke in his own right; nor was he envious in the least degree of the young gentleman in fine linen and Brussels lace, in concert with whom he

executed shrill duets and pas de deux upon nothing. His existence could be scarcely a newer thing to him than that of Miss Maria Keggs was now to her. The great swing-glass which adorned the nursery was as a magic mirror to this maiden from "Sweater's Rents," and all things reflected in it partook more or less in her eyes of the nature of enchantment; the polished wardrobes seemed to her to form very tolerable dwelling-houses of themselves; the gigantic beds to have been built for the purpose of being let out to some very superior class of lodger, in lots of half-a-dozen sleepers at a time; the marble wash-handstand, the fringed towels, which, instead of revolving upon cylinders and being used indifferently by all the family for weeks, were allotted in countless numbers to each person, and were continually being renewed upon their mahogany trees-at all these things Miss Maria Keggs was never weary of gazing, and the more particularly while she had the infant Birt upon her knees, and was rolling him up in his swaddlingclothes after the manner of making a snow man ;— long after he was finished, and should have been pinned, and when he could grow no stouter for rolling, linen and flannel being alike exhausted, he still went on revolving slowly, his young nurse's thoughts being entirely taken up with the astounding character of the furniture, and it required the

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"Nów, Keggs!" of Mrs. Groves in her sharpest tone, to bring her from the realms of fancy down to pins. The Chartist lady, on the contrary, as became her, behaved amidst all this magnificence like an ancient stoic; she trod upon the pride of Plato with a greater pride: when Maria began to praise anything (and she did praise everything, from the curtains to the coal-scuttle, and all by the same epithet of " Bootiful "), she would reply that it was "pretty well," in a tone that would have led a stranger to imagine that it was nothing to what was to be seen every day at her own private residence. Once when her little companion extolled the carpet, she put a stop to further eulogy by stating, that it would have been more admirable if it had not been made out of the sweat and blood of the people this was a current phrase of Mr. Groves', and his wife was used to it, but nothing could exceed the horror with which poor Maria regarded the unconscious Kidderminster after hearing that statement; she looked upon its crimson spots with all the belief of a papist in the bottle of the blood of St. Januarius. Mrs. Groves had reason enough for wrath against her present patron, and there was scarcely any need, one would have thought, for a lady of her temperament to have so rigorously nursed it! To the young aristocrat, however, she was kind and even affectionate; and when on the

fourth day she took her charge for the first time into his mother's room, Mrs. Hollis thanked her so gratefully as to bring tears into her eyes.

"You were with my poor dear Sarah when she died, I think, nurse?"

"I was, ma'am; and she went off very comfortable," was the reply.

"Did you hear her last message to me?—the exact words, I mean; for what Sir Toby Ruffles remembered of it seemed very strange."

"No, ma'am, I did not; but the other doctor was by; he'd tell you, bless you, for he never forgets nothing—Mr. Field.”

Mrs. Hollis did not answer; she thought that it would not be pleasing to Sir Toby that another medical man should be introduced into the house without his knowledge. "It's a beautiful baby, too," said she presently, complimenting Birt junior at second hand, and after a glowing eulogium upon her own infant; "but it doesn't seem to take so much notice as mine, I think."

Whatever may have been wanting in that respect in the baby was more than compensated for by its little nurse, Maria, whom an apparatus for turning on hot and cold water in the bed-room,-the like of which had never before been seen by her save in the gin palace at the corner of Sweater's Rents, whither she had been often sent for quarterns by

her lady mother, was petrifying with admiration.

“I think,” pursued Mrs. Hollis, thoughtfully, "that it would be but right for me to be his godmother."

"Be his what?" observed a voice from behind the curtains ; "what was that you were observing, my dear, as I opened the door?"

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Nothing, Henry; I only thought that the two children might be christened together, and that there would be no harm in my standing."

"There would be the greatest harm, Mrs. Hollis," replied the husband, in a tone which implied that standing godmother was an athletic feat of the most dangerous character; "you are already fatigued with..... Now I tell you what, nurse," cried the speaker, interrupting himself upon catching sight of the boy with the cheap lace and cotton cap, "if you ever bring that brat down here again to worry your mistress, you may take my word for it I'll throw it out of window; his mother made mischief enough before him, a canting, sneaking....

"She is buried to-day, sir," interposed Mrs. Groves, with great distinctness; "they're now about putting her into her grave." Mr. Hollis muttered something to himself, which sounded like "how should I know?" Miss Maria Keggs turned