wants to see you he'll send for you; but I wouldn't count on it, my dear.'

Belle smiled rather sadly to herself. It seemed to her no such loss to do without the companionship of this strange old man. She had missed that happy growing up among her kindred that falls to most of us; perhaps if she had never been able to remember when she had first seen her Aunt Burnside; had been dandled in her arms as a baby; petted by her as a child, she would have been blind now to much that shocked her sensibilities in the good-natured homely woman. Belle's mood was still rebellious; she could not grow reconciled to her lot. She could have embraced poverty without a regret-poverty as she knew it, was often picturesque and always pathetic; but this vulgar, sordid, common-place comfort; this life of mediocre aims, and narrow content, had no beauty in her eyes. Instinctively her thoughts wandered to the past, and involuntarily she spoke her thought aloud

'I loved my father; we were everything to each other.'

'My brother David was always fond of keeping to himself,' said Mrs. Burnside, shaking her head; but for my part I think families ought to hold to each other. Blood is thicker than water, as I tell Harriet often, and when you're in trouble you'll be glad to turn from your fine friends and find that you've a sister left. Why, bless me! there's the carriage and your Aunt Ashe, and Oliver too, and this room all in a litter!'

'Let us go to mine,' said Belle, rising hastily and grasping at this chance of escape. 'There are chairs enough for us all.'

'Well, call to Susan, my dear,' said Mrs. Burnside, smoothing down her gown; 'that footman of theirs has no patience, knocking as if he would bring the house down.'

Aunt Ashe was very different from Aunt Burnside, Belle decided as she sat with the gentle, over-dressed little lady in her own pretty room. She asked Belle a great many affectionate questions. There was no difficulty in getting on with her, or in finding pleasant little things to say. She was like hundreds of people whom Belle had known; it was a relief to sink back into the old ways where no conversational surprises were possible. As she looked at Oliver she felt this more strongly than ever. Olivers were to be met in every drawing-room, and at every dinner-table. Society had accepted him and moulded him to the conventional pattern.

'You remember Oliver?' his mother was saying, looking across at the handsome young man with unconcealed pride. 'He often talks of that winter he spent in Rome. You must come and see us very often, Belle. It will be so nice for us both; I often fear it is dull at home for my poor boy with only his mother for company.'

'What is the mother saying?' said Oliver, joining her as Mrs. Ashe turned to her sister. 'I hope she is impressing on you that you have

two homes in London? Aunt Burnside must be generous and share her good fortune with us.'

it.

'My grandfather has settled that this is to be my Belle hardly knew why she said it.

home.'

6

'He must be reasoned with,' said Oliver, lightly. Philip shall do How do you get on with Phil?'

'I get on with him!' she said slowly. 'I think it would be difficult not to get on with Philip.'

'He's a dear old fellow,' said Oliver, carelessly, 'in spite of his crotchets. I'm immensely fond of Phil; he's so absurdly unconventional. What a pretty room you have made of this; it takes me back to Rome directly. I've one or two things I brought back with me that time, I'd like to show you. Do you remember what friends we used to be then, Cousin Belle? Will you let me begin again where we left off?'

'I don't know;' she looked at him with her grave smile. 'I was very rash in my friendships in those days. I have grown more cautious since then, I think. Listen-is not that Aunt Burnside calling?'

'Oh, there is no hurry. They are busy over a recipe, depend on it, or examining Aunt Burnside's last new cap, or discussing the perfections of Philip and Oliver.'

'Or their imperfections,' Belle suggested.

They had gone down stairs, and were standing together at the open door. The sisters still lingered, talking in the parlour. Belle and her cousin were alone, for the narrow street with its line of nodding trees above the high wall opposite was given over to afternoon quietness. 'Have you begun to discover my faults already,' said Oliver in a tone of mock distress. 'As for Phil

Belle was not listening. She was looking absently at a young workman in soiled jacket, and with blackened face and hands, who was coming down the street with rapid steps; she was wondering idly what was the motive of his haste. He paused in front of them and looked quickly from the elegant young man leaning negligently against the doorpost, to the slender girl in black standing with lightly-folded hands. 'Where's Burnside?' he asked abruptly.

'Are you a friend of his ?' Oliver asked, elevating his eyebrows, an amused smile curling his moustache. The man looked at him, and his mouth took a harder set, but he made no reply.

Belle went down the steps.

'He hasn't come home yet,' she said; 'but it is almost time for him What is it? Can I do anything for you?'

to come.

'You?' the workman glanced at her slight figure. No. My mate's down with the fever; he's pretty bad, and the women have got frightened; they're screeching for Burnside.'

He will be here immediately; I will send him,' said Belle, gravely. 'Tell me where to direct him.'

She looked back at her cousin, but he made no movement to join the man, who, having given her the needful directions, was hurrying away as swiftly as he came, relying on her promise of help for his comrade.

'Phil's friends are rather unceremonious,' said Oliver, looking at her with a smile. 'Does he treat you to much of their company, Belle !'

'No,' she answered gravely, looking away from him down the street, where at any moment Philip might be seen; 'I am not good enough.'

She stood there still after the carriage had rolled away; the wheels sent up a little cloud of dust as they rolled smoothly on, leaving that hurrying figure she was still watching, far behind. She waited to give Philip the message.

'You will be in danger?' she asked.

'No,' he said, quietly; the fever is not infectious.'

He heard her and thanked her, but he did not ask her to go with him to those wailing women who were calling out for him.

'I am not good enough,' she said again bitterly to herself as she turned slowly and went up to her room.

(To be continued.)

SHAKSPERE TALKS WITH UNCRITICAL PEOPLE.

XV. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

(Published 1602; supposed date 1598-9.)

AMONG the many knotty points connected with the question of the true sequence of Shakspere's plays, there is hardly a worse one to settle than the position of the Merry Wives of Windsor with reference to the three other plays with which it is linked, namely, the two Parts of Henry IV., and Henry V. The introduction of Falstaff joins it closely to the Henry IV. plays, and Bardolph, Pistol, and Co. carry on the links in Henry V. Our friends the critics have tried, with much care and pains, to work out theories which would dispose of the difficulties in the way of recognising the Merry Wives as rightly placed between the Second Part of Henry IV. and Henry V., or else to find for it some other position, easier to be defended. For these worthy critical gentlemen have assumed that Shakspere was bound to write the Merry Wives like a number of a serial tale, with all the statements about all the characters exactly corresponding with those in previous and subsequent numbers. Perhaps he ought to have done so, and it would certainly have been amusing if we could have followed the develop ment of the fortunes of any character from play to play-say Mrs. Quickly, for instance; but he preferred to keep the name and the character, while displaying it in circumstances which no ingenuity can make to correspond with her circumstances in other plays. Probably he knew his own business best, and for us who are not critical the pleasantest way of treating this play is to do with it in the reading what Shakspere seems to have done in the writing, which is not to think about the details of the Henry IV. plays at all, but dismiss them from our mind, till we get on to Henry V., when the Merry Wives may be similarly allowed to retire into the background. So we avoid having to make our way through a weary tangle of conjecture and of comparison of trivial points, neither profitable nor amusing. The tradition which connects Queen Elizabeth with this play, representing it as written at her order, dates from eighty-six years after Shakspere's death, and there appears no reason to discredit it, though that her reason for ordering it was a wish to see Falstaff in love, seems to be a guess on the part of those who handed down the incident after it was first recorded. If the tradition has any value, it indicates that Falstaff was known to the Queen before the production of the Merry Wives, probably in the Henry IV. plays. That after Shakspere had killed Falstaff and all his followers in Henry V. he could possibly have dug them up again for the Merry Wives is too much to believe; so let us take it where we have placed it, and be content.

Far more interesting than efforts to clear up the inextricable tangles of Mrs. Quickly's matrimonial affairs, &c., is the consideration of the peculiar position which the Merry Wives holds among Shakspere's comedies. It is his one play entirely laid in English middle-class life. In other plays he puts scenes taken from this level of society beside those from higher and lower ones, but here all is taken from the same phase of life. The neighbourhood of Windsor Castle gives a pleasant feeling of possible excitement for the townsfolk, such as the arrival of some distinguished foreigner, out of whom an honest penny might be made, but this does not interfere with the marked character of the play. Nor are pictures of lower society forced upon us as in the Henry IV. plays; for even the disreputableness of Falstaff's followers has to keep itself mainly in the background, while he sustains the part of a person of some consequence under a temporary cloud. So nothing interferes to make the Merry Wives other than a gay picture of the life of Shakspere's own class—a lively, laughable picture of course, as he was making a laughable comedy, but none the less true and lifelike. It is very interesting to compare this one sketch of Shakspere's with the many plays of middle-class life produced by his contemporaries and immediate successors such a one as Massinger's City Madam, for instance-and to notice the difference of tone and handling. The other dramatists, with all their brilliant talent, could not have hit off Parson Evans and Slender, and the cheerful, homely honesty of the Wives, not if their lives had depended on it, and their coarser instincts would not have failed to make Falstaff wholly offensive instead of ridiculous. Putting Sir John temporarily out of sight, what a pleasant cheery feeling pervades the play, as it gives the bright side of simple burgher life in a small country town. Most of the types of English life which it presents are wholesome and pleasant. There is the little school-boy tripping gaily along by his mother's side, in all the delight of an unexpected holiday; the jolly, if boisterous, Host; the quaint, sententious, lovable Parson; the hearty, fresh-faced dames, not at all so overpowered with household cares, or the anxiety of a 'heavy wash,' that a joke and a gossip comes amiss to them; there are the sturdy husbands, pleasantly exchanging homely hospitality, and going out 'birding' in the early morning freshness; and, to crown all, there is the typical English maiden, with the brown hair and the soft voice and the true heart, stepping lightly about her household work and bewitching her lovers. The brightly-hued figures harmonise delightfully with the sober tints of the ideal interior of an old English house, with the rich green of the Windsor meadows, with the rustling forest trees, and the mental tone of most of the characters is one of harmonious satisfaction and contentment with their surroundings. Anne's parents have their ambition for their girl, but they have no desire to match her out of her sphere, or to make a fine lady out of the burgher heiress. Sir Hugh Evans and Dr. Caius may have a violent quarrel