WARLEIGH'S TRUST.

BY THE EDITOR.

CHAPTER IX.-WON!

THE next day Janetta walked about the house, with subdued air and mournful countenance, till Mrs. Marris was moved to ask her if anything was the matter. She only shook her head, and sighed profoundly, as though unable to reply, and, as the evening drew near, she became increasingly depressed, almost to tears. Hilda opined that she had a very bad headache; that perhaps she was going to have scarlet fever!—or, perhaps, she was going back to Reading!

"Are you going away?" asked Miss Warleigh, when she and her governess had finished tea that afternoon; 'you told me, Janetta, that you would never leave me till papa came back and wanted me for his little housekeeper! you know you did; and good people always keep their promises."

"If they can!" sighed Janetta, lugubriously, putting her handkerchief to her eyes; "one cannot always control one's destiny; it's a troublesome world to live in, Hilda, as you will find out to your cost, someday, my dear. Ah! things will go crookedly, and in some people's lot there is nothing but crookedness!"

"I am sure the world is not so very bad, Janetta,” replied Hilda, in a ridiculously oracular tone; "I know I am troublesome sometimes; but I have not been really naughty since the day before yesterday, and Nurse says I am not by any means so trying as I used to be. You don't mean to go away; now, do you, Janetta ? " "I cannot tell," was Janetta's melancholy response; "don't ask me any questions, Hilda, for I cannot answer them; you would not understand if I did. I am very, very unhappy."

"Ah, I know

"I am sure you need not be!" returned Hilda. you are what Nurse calls 'out of spirits!' I'll ask uncle to take you to the theatre, and me, too, of course; it is very dull just now, with the streets and the square all drizzle and fog, and nobody calling, and nothing but that muddy pavement to look at. Uncle promised to take us to the theatre one night; I dare say he has forgotten all about it; he told me this morning that he had a great many things to think about. Now, Janetta, don't look so dismal; I don't like it! I hate people to be gloomy. Are you sulky?"

For answer, Miss Morrison only shook her head, and Hilda,

finding the conversation to be unsatisfactory, took herself off to the nursery, where Marris was very busy hemming some new linen sheets with Dorcas, the red-haired handmaiden, who had proved herself "good at need" during the prevalence of the fever-for her companion.

"What ails Janetta?" asked the young lady, as she established herself with her dolls and her picture-book on the hearthrug "She won't talk to me, and she looks ever so wretched. Is she going away?"

upon

"I must have a She's a

"Really I don't know, Miss Hilda," replied Marris; "she must go away some time, you know; people can't stop on visiting for ever and for ever, and I think it's high time Miss Morrison went home. She came here in May, and now it's close Christmas; any decent person would have gone long ago." "But I do not want her to go," urged Hilda. governess, you say, and why can't I keep Janetta? great deal kinder to me sometimes than you are, Nurse; she lets me do just what I like, and she gives me everything I want. I shall tell uncle she must not go away; she must stay till I am grown up, and fit to be mistress of the house. But I don't think you like my dear Janetta, Nurse!"

"No, I don't, Miss Hilda," said Nurse, altogether forgetting the prudence she had for some time imposed upon herself. "I don't like her, and I never shall, and the sooner I see the back of her the better. She wears two faces, does Miss Morrison, and I'm beginning to think it was an unlucky day for us when first she came among us. Take your old nurse's word, my pretty lamb, and don't try to keep Miss Morrison any longer; she'll do you no good in the end, you'll see; she's all for number one, and I think I'm afraid I see what's her little game!"

"As if anybody with their eyes half open couldn't see that," interrupted Dorcas, with a vicious snap of her needle that shivered it to pieces, and broke the thread. "Laws, I hadn't been a day in the house before I knew what she was after, the nasty, deceitful baggage. But I hope she won't get what she wants."

"What does she want?" asked Hilda, solemnly, with her large blue-grey eyes fixed upon Dorcas; "because if she wants anything that I can give her, she shall have it; and if I can't give it her, because I am only a little girl, I'll speak to uncle about it."

But neither from Nurse nor from Dorcas could Hilda obtain an answer; they dropped their work and looked at each other, these two-the old woman and the young one-and exchanged certain enigmatical sentences, which seemed satisfactory to themselves, but which gave the little girl no information whatever. There was some mystery in which Janetta was involved. Hilda had

quite wit enough to perceive that; but, being only six years old, she was naturally incompetent to the unravelling of the perplexity. She could only frown, and declare that everybody was stupid and disagreeable, and she wished her uncle would come home and talk to her, since no one else would; she would just tell him what a tiresome, stupid day she had had. And then, being out of all patience, she ran away, and met Mr. Willabye in the hall, and made her complaint as she had threatened.

Janetta, however, was not visible, and when dinner-time came she begged to be excused; she would see her "Cousin Frank later in the evening; and accordingly, with the coffee, she made her appearance.

“Good heavens, Janetta!" cried Mr. Willabye, as she seated herself by the fire, "what has happened to you? What a ghost you look!"

"I am tired; I have a bad cold-a dreadful headache," replied Janetta, in an extinguished voice. "I ought not to have come down at all this evening; but I felt so restless--so unhappy."

"Is anything the matter at Reading? I saw you had a letter this morning."

"Yes, I had a letter-and-and, Cousin Frank, I am not going back there any more."

"Indeed! Is there any quarrel ? "

"No, not exactly a quarrel. But, you see, I have stayed away so long that they no longer want me. My place is filled up; I have no home now with the Skinners; I have no home anywhere; what shall I do, Cousin Frank?"

'Indeed, I don't know. I think the Skinners have not acted very nicely, considering all you have done for them. They'll miss you before long, you may depend upon it."

'Perhaps so; but, meanwhile, what am I to do? I must have some sort of home. I must say Mary Sophia has been very unkind, for I could not help Hilda having the fever while I was here, could I, Cousin Frank? And of course there was the risk of infection, and I don't wonder, with all those delicate children, that she was afraid. But now the danger is over, quite over, and she has found out that she does not want me. I had better stay where I am, she says; her niece Harriet is going to live with them."

Frank looked keenly at Janetta, but she had covered her face with her hands, and was supposed to be quietly weeping. What in the world was to be done with her? She was very poor, he knew ; she had not enough of her own to keep her decently in clothes, Martha had often said; and the Skinners had given her a home ever since her mother's death, in return for which she had been

well content to make herself "generally useful" as a friend of the family, rather than as a hired domestic.

"Janetta," said Mr. Willabye presently, "I am very sorrymore sorry than I can say that it should have come to this. Of course, we could none of us help Hilda catching the scarlet fever; it was clearly a dispensation of Providence. And when you had once run the risk of the infection, there was nothing for it but to keep you with us till the danger was past. But you are not bound to the Skinners."

"Oh, no, no! And my home with them has not been a happy one. Mary Sophia has always put upon me, knowing that I was without friends, and had nothing in the world except the merest pittance, that was altogether insufficient to keep body and soul together. The children were encouraged to get me at defiance— nasty, little ill-tempered things that they are!-and yet I was expected to keep them in perfect order, and was reckoned responsible for all their freaks and fits of naughtiness."

"Well, perhaps, after all, it is a good thing that something has happened to sever the connection. Suppose you answered an advertisement, now? There are always plenty in the morning papers. Or suppose you put one in yourself, stating exactly your requirements and qualifications, &c., that would be the best way, would it not?"

But Janetta only shook her head hopelessly, and presently said, with a good deal of hesitation, "But what kind of situation would do for me, Cousin Frank? I am such a poor creature!"

"You could continue to be a governess, could not you? You have been Mrs. Skinner's 'governess' all these years, I suppose?

"Well, not really. I have been nursery governess-in name, at least; but really nursery maid, and lady's maid, and upper housemaid, and assistant housekeeper, and just everything that was wanted, according to occasion. But a proper 'governess' I could not be, Cousin Frank. I know so little that I could teach again; I had but a very poor sort of education; I cannot play very well; indeed, I cannot play at all, as people count 'playing' nowadays, when everybody is expected to be quite an amateur professor. Then I know no language but my own, and not a scrap of any sort of ology! and governesses are supposed to be able to teach everything now."

"Not entirely so! the polyglot governess is almost an institution of the past. If you could promise for thorough good English and a little French that would be sufficient."

"But I could not; I could not indeed. I could teach such a child as Hilda, I think, for a year, or two, say-not longer. And what should I do while I was looking out for a situation?"

"You might stay here a little longer, perhaps," conceded Frank, with manifest reluctance. "Of course, if you have to make fresh arrangements, the sooner it is done the better; and I should be sorry, after your kindness to us, to put you-or, rather, to allow you to be subject to any inconvenience. Suppose we draw up

an advertisement at once? I shall be going into Fleet Street, tomorrow."

"Thank you, Cousin Frank," was the mournful reply; and then Janetta burst into tears-into genuine tears, for her hopes were rapidly sinking. "Cousin Frank" either would not, or could not, understand her drift; it was most unkind of him to force her to speak plainly.

Come, come!" he said, after an awkward pause, daring which he wished himself anywhere else; "you mustn't give way, Janetta; there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it! and there are plenty of families beside the Skinners, who will be only too glad of your services. You will be very happy-somewhere, when you get used to new people, and new ways; far happier than you were by your own showing-at Reading.'

"Oh, no! no!" she sobbed; never never!"

"Never is a long day, Janetta."

"All the worse for me," she replied, bitterly; "I shall never be happy again! I wish I were dead! Oh, why can't I die?"

"Do you know, Janetta, that you are talking very wickedly. People cannot go on in one groove for ever! It is weak and sinful to murmur over every change-for changes will come; you are quite old enough to be sure of that from your own experience. And now I think of it, a friend of my own wanted some one, as a sort of nursery governess, not long ago, and he may not be suited yet. Oh, we shall find something for you, never fear!"

But she did not seem in the slightest degree consoled; indeed, her manifest distress was redoubled; and she continued to weep and to sob quite piteously.

"No! no;' "" she murmured.

"It is all over; I can never be

happy again! Oh, that I had never come here! Oh, that I had gone away before it was too late-too late!

"Too late? What can you mean, Janetta? I thought you had a very happy time here, and at River House! I thought

had

"And so I have been happy," she interrupted, passionately; "too happy-far too happy! I have been living in a fool's paradise, and though I knew the end must come, I put it out of my thoughts, and tried not to think of it. Oh, Frank, Frank!" There was no mistaking her now. If her tongue did not speak plainly, her eyes did-those black, bright, little eyes, lit up with an expression that fairly frightened him.

He was the magnet