'WHAT Who ladies' carriages, Miss

THAT is the supposed origin of

Bates? They are a time-honoured institution, of course; but in these days one likes to know more about things than that they exist-one likes derivations. What are ladies' carriages derived from, and what is their supposed object?'

'My dear Miss Dashwood I really-so very amusing!'

I Milly, listen to Miss Bates "On Ladies' Carriages." She says, imprimis, they are amusing.'

My dear, I mean't nothing of the kind. I mean't, you know, that they are very proper'

And you separate the two ideas? You think that nothing that is right can be pleasant. Oh, Miss Bates, Miss Bates, what a fast person you are growing! How fearfully the last four years have degenerated you!'

"What spirits!' was Miss Bates's response to this little attack upon her character; what charming spirits dear Miss Dashwood continued to enjoy! just as full of life and fun as ever! And then, the last bell having rung, Miss Bates insisted upon getting into the carriage once more to kiss all her dear young friends before their departure; and, finally, in the forgetfulness of affection, was very near being locked in, and borne away with them in the express train-an accident which all her very dear young friends seemed remarkably anxious to prevent.

'She means well, I believe,' said Milly Dashwood, as they caught the last sight of the Bates struggling wildly among a crowd of porters upon the platform of the Paddington terminus. She means well, but she is very unpleasant. Oh, how glad I am to be free from her!'

'She is detestable,' said Jane, curtly. I hate her-as she hates

me! That is right, Miss Fleming, open the windows on both sides. We have need of a good fresh draught upon us after all the Bates' kisses!' And here Miss Dashwood threw her hat off with visible impatience at the mere recollection of her friend's caresses, and held her face to the open window, through which the summer morning wind was blowing freshly.

It was a lovely face! I speak advisedly; for few faces are lovely in real life; but hers undoubtedly was so. Such brilliant colouring! such abundance of dark fine hair! such liquid hazel eyes! I don't think there was anything at all in the expression of the features, collectively, that charmed you as you looked at her. You thought of eyes and lips and blooming cheeks alone. I am quite sure you read nothing whatever of beauty of mind or soul, as one does in romance, upon Jane Dashwood's face. You were quite content with the beauty of the outward material, without going deeper, or seeking for the exact inward charms she did not possess; and at this moment, when I first introduce her to you, dressed in a simple rosecoloured muslin, and with the broad June morning resting full upon her faultlessly pure complexion, she formed, altogether, about as favourable a type of a fair young Englishwoman in the freshness of her first maturity as you would meet, or desire to meet with anywhere.

Her sister Millicent at her side was also pretty, mignonne, and delicate-even more frailly delicate than Jane-but with less perfect features-perhaps with a somewhat sweeter and less restless expression than her elder sister. At the few balls to which Milly had ever been (she was only seventeen, and yesterday was a school-girl), she had had

quite as many partners as Miss Dashwood; and had, on the whole, been better liked by the men who danced with her. Jane was beautiful enough to give herself royal airs, and took full advantage of the prerogative. Millicent was only pretty enough to be shy and coaxing and good-tempered, with, at times, a slight dash of wilfulness flavouring the good-temper: but Milly found these subjective charms quite as powerful in their way as Jane's objective ones, and she was not only thoroughly unenvious of her sister's superior beauty, but, possessed of the conviction-as deep down in her mind as Milly's little mind had depth-that she would, one day or another, rule quite as triumphantly over a limited empire of her own as Jane, in all the pride of her beauty and arrogance and one-and-twenty years, was reigning over hers now.

This empire, reader, did not extend over the very first London society, of which the Dashwood girls knew nothing, but over that outlying and somewhat mouldering province of fashion, Bath, where their father, Colonel Dashwood, had been a shining light during the last twenty years. Jane had now been staying a fortnight in town with distant relatives to see the exhibitions, for which she cared nothing, and to go to see one or two operas, for which she cared a great deal: Jane Dashwood assisted a very little, you see, in white silk and jasminewreath, at the latter entertainments, not at all at the former ones.

And she was this day chaperoning Milly home to Bath, that young person's apprenticeship at the finishing establishment of Miss Bates, Kensington Gravel Pits, having just expired.

'Yes, you are finished, Milly,' Jane remarked, when her indignant recollection of Miss Bates had had time to cool. Poor little Milly, of seventeen, finished! I never kissed you before Miss Bates, child; I couldn't. Let me look at you. Milly, dear, I think you look stronger than you used to do;' and Jane put her arms round her, and kissed her with one of those long, silent caresses that she never

bestowed upon any living being but her sister. Milly, we shan't be parted any more now.'

And I shall have to learn nothing more, Jane. I hate learning!'

'So did I, Milly. I had seven years of it-you have only had four.'

'But you were clever. You could win prizes and make progress.'

And enemies, Milly. Now I dare say you have had some real friends at school. I never had one.'

'I have Esther,' said Milly, glancing at their young companion, who had betaken herself to the farther compartment of the carriage. Esther is worth a dozen common friends. I like her better than any one in the world but you, Jane, although I've only known her six months. She is so clever-did my exercises like a key, and mended my stockings most beautifully, every other thread-but not pretty, Jane, eh?'

'She is distinguished-looking,' replied Miss Dashwood, who, like all unequivocally handsome women, could afford, at times, to be generous; 'pretty is not a word for her. She has just that air noble which papa is always trying to impress upon our minds as so essentially aristocratic-as though little things like you and me, Milly, could be statuesque, if we tried.'

'Oh, papa!' repeated Milly, the parental image evidently coming before her mind for the first time. Papa-how is he?-I quite forgot to ask-and mamma?'

'Much as usual,' answered Jane,' shortly. shortly. Philanthropy and nerves, title-hunting and polemical teaparties: the old routine of our house, Milly, from which I, as of old, escape as much as usual.'

'Where to, Jane? Who are your dear, intimate friends at present? What have I got to look forward to?'

I have no friends at all,' answered Miss Dashwood. 'I never do have any; and I shall want them less than ever now that I have got you back, Milly. But I am usefully intimate with one or two young women of my own age, and

in their society I walk about the streets in winter and the park in summer. You know! Then in the winter old Mrs. Blantyre took me to the balls, when papa was laid up with the gout, and in the summer young Mrs. Strangways has promised to take us both to the archery-meetings and the subscription pic-nics.'

'What! the Mrs. Strangways you used to dislike so?"

'The same,' said Jane, with a somewhat hard laugh; and with the same amiable feelings still going on between us! She is a capital chaperon, Milly. Young married Women always are - particularly when they dislike one very heartily.'

'I can understand that,' replied Milly, after giving the subject sufficient attention to grapple duly with its mysteries. 'If they take you they amuse themselves, and let you do exactly as you like, of course. But why does a woman like Mrs. Strangways care to be troubled with you at all, Jane?'

'Because new lights may bring back old worshippers to the neglected shrine, because a little stray incense-oh, Milly, darling, don't let's talk of these people now! You will learn enough of such tactics as Mrs. Strangways' without my teaching you! Do you know, child, your hair has grown darker? I am quite positive it has. I wonder whether Mrs. Dashwood will see it.'

And Miss Dashwood stroked down her sister's hair with loving hands, looking into its texture and colour with something of that close, long scrutiny with which children's hair and cheeks and eyes are scrutinized when they come back to their mother, grown and altered, after every six months' absence at school.

Fancy Mrs. Dashwood thinking of such earthly vanities as a shade of difference in my tawny locks!' cried Milly. Papa, of course, would like to see the article "daughter" generally improved and more marketable, but no one on earth besides you, Jane, ever feels any concern about me or my looks when I come and go. Luckily, it does not break my heart! really wonder sometimes whether I

I

Only engaged to him it does not matter,' cried Miss Dashwood, with her short laugh. Miss Fleming, what nonsense has Milly been telling you about me?'

Only nonsense, I am sure,' answered a calm, sonorous voice, singularly different in its ring and cadence to the Dashwoods'. 'I should be sorry to believe it anything else.'

Oh, you dear, steady, severe old Esther!' cried Miss Milly.' Please don't be so like Miss Bates on the first day of our freedom. I feel the prison-chill steal over me again when you come out with those awful moral sentiments-" I should be sorry to believe it anything else." Really it seemed like Miss Bates in person, didn't it, Jane?'

'I think no two human beings in the world could be so unlike as Miss Fleming and the Bates,' said Jane, quickly. 'If I were any judge of such matters I should say that I think both you and I, Milly, have a great many more Bates qualities than Miss Fleming has. Miss Bates is worldly; so are we: yes, Milly, dear, even you, in spite of your blue eyes and your seventeen years: Miss Bates's life is acting, every hour of it; so is ours: Miss Bates has only one object-to seem what she is not; our ambition, directed into another channel, is the same. She is odious and we are delightful, certainly; but these are adventitious conditions beyond our own control. At heart

'We are both of us selfish, sordid, wicked, worldly hypocrites,' interrupted Milly, laughing. How I do like to hear you in your sudden fits of repentance, Jenny. Come over here, Esther,' she added, turning to her friend, and hear Miss Dashwood holding forth on our

family virtues. Don't be shy-oh, I forgot! I have not introduced you. Jane, Esther. Esther, Jane. What a colour you have got, Mistress Fleming, with holding your face outside the window all this time. You don't look very much like Miss Bates, I must confess.'

Not very like, certainly; Miss Bates being parchment-hued, withered, forty-five; Esther Fleming fresh, full of life and health, and only just eighteen. Still Jane Dashwood had been right in applying the qualified terms noble' and 'distinguishedlooking to Miss Fleming's style of beauty. Handsome though she was when you came to know her face by heart, not two persons out of a hundred would have hesitated, at first sight, to pronounce her face inferior in good looks to either of the Dashwood girls. She had, as Milly told her, a colour at this moment, but ordinarily she was pale; and colour is after all the standard commonplace criterion of beauty. Then she possessed none of the little piquant graces that formed so many charms in the Dashwood girls. She was rather large, and decidedly strongly built and beside their two little fragile figures you would inevitably have been possessed, during the first ten minutes or so, with the idea that she was not perfectly refined. With good room to study the three young women in—an open moorland, say, with sky for roof and heather for carpet-you must soon have reversed your first judgment; for every line in Esther's well-grown frame was duly proportioned; finer far, in fact, than the Dashwoods'. Her hands had the brown healthy look of hands that have lived much out of doors, but they were not too large for her size, and in shape were perfect as a gipsy's, while the Dashwoods' hands were only short-fingered, and small, and white. Her walk-on the moor, mind, I don't mean in a ball-room-was free and stately as a Tyrol peasant girl's. The Dashwood's paces were good as far as they went, but they were paces still. Then Esther Fleming's head was small and admirably formed, and this is a beauty possessed by not

one otherwise handsome Englishwoman in a hundred. Her hair was fairer by many shades than you would have expected from her dark clear skin; brown waving hair, growing golden almost in a very full light. Her face-no, I will leave that alone; all descriptions of faces are a mistake. I may tell you of a cheek serene and clear, of blackgrey eyes, of a delicate firm-cut mouth; I can never bring the living Esther Fleming herself one whit nearer to you. You will not see her smile, half shy, half serious; you will not see the expression of her loving thoughtful eyes, with all my catalogue of charms. Read, instead, the expression of the face that you were enamoured of when you first left school, and you will see before you a more loveable heroine than any that words of mine can by any possibility set forth.

This is the wild woman of the woods that I have written to you about,' said Milly, addressing her sister, and possessing herself, schoolgirl like, of Miss Fleming's hand. 'Doesn't she look as if she had lived in the wilds of Exmoor all her life? Esther, what do you think of Jane?' 'Your sister is like you, Milly, but

'Prettier. Of course; I have heard that since I was a baby, and have quite left off being jealous. That brings us round-I don't know by what road-to Paul again. Don't try to blush, Jenny; where is he?'

Mr. Chichester is in Bath,' Jane replied; or rather, he was there when I left. He never stays more than two or three days at a time. I can't think what in the world makes him come there at all.'

'But does he really visit at our house, Jane?'