rude and impulsive pressure, had fallen away, one's body might be most happily fitted. It was of exactly the right height; it made the handsomest creaking noises when one rocked in it-and in any case, Helen was only a girl.

But the sense of his triumph had not yet fully descended upon him. As he sat up in bed, yawning, with a tickle in the middle of his back and his throat very dry, he was disappointedly aware that he was still the same Jeremy of yesterday. He did not know what it was exactly that he had expected, but he did not feel at present that confident proud glory for which he had been prepared. Perhaps it was too early.

He turned round, curled his head into his arm, and with a half-muttered, half-dreamt statement about the wicker chair, he was once again asleep.

$2

He awoke to the customary sound of the bath-water running into the bath. His room was flooded with sunshine and old Jampot, the Nurse (her name was Mrs. Preston and her shape was Jampot) was saying as usual: "Now, Master Jeremy, eight o'clock, no lying in bed-out-you-get, bath ready."

He stared at her, blinking.

"You should say, 'Many happy returns of the day, Master Jeremy" ", he remarked. Then suddenly with a leap he was out of bed, had crossed the floor, pushed back the nurserydoor, and was sitting in the wicker armchair, his naked feet kicking a triumphant dance.

"Helen, Helen," he called, "I'm in the chair."

No sound.

"I'm eight," he shouted, "and I'm in the chair." Mrs. Preston breath

sibly sulky, although when he smiled his whole face was lighted with humor. Helen was the only beautiful Cole child and she was abundantly aware of that fact. The Coles had never been a good-looking family..

He stood in front of the fireplace now as he had seen his father do, his short legs apart, his head up and his hands behind his back.

"Now, Master Jeremy," the Jampot continued, "you may be eight years old, but it isn't a reason for disobedience the very first minute, and of course your bath is ready and you catching your death with naked feet which you've always been told to put your slippers on; and not to keep the bath waiting when there's Miss Helen and Miss Mary, as you very well know, and breakfast coming in five minutes which there's sausages this morning, because it's your birthday and them all getting cold. . ." "Sausages."

He was across the floor in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt and was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of excitement and splendor. They had sausages so seldom, not always even on birthdays and today, on a cold morning with a crackling fire and marmalade perhaps !-and, then, all the presents.

Oh, he was happy. As he rubbed his back with the towel, a wonderful glowing, Christian charity spread from his head to his toes and tingled through every inch of him. Helen should sit in the chair when she pleased, Mary should be allowed to dress and undress the large woolen dog, known as "Sulks", his own especial and beloved property, so often as she wished, Jampot should poke the twisted end of the towel in his

ears and brush his hair with hard brushes and he would not say a word. Aunt Mary should kiss him (as of course she would want to do) and he would not shiver; he would (bravest deed of all) allow Mary to read "Alice in Wonderland" in her singsong voice so long as ever she wanted . . . Sausages. Sausages.

In his shirt and short blue trousers, his hair on end, tugging at his braces, he stood in the doorway and shouted:

"Helen, there are sausages-because it's my birthday. Aren't you glad?"

And even when the only response to his joyous invitation was Helen's voice crossly admonishing the Jampot: "Oh, you do pull so you're hurting",

checked.

his charity was not

Then when he stood clothed and of a cheerful mind once more in front of the fire, a shyness stole over him. He knew that the moment for presents was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to kiss and be kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to say again and again, "Oh, thank you, thank you so much"; that he would have his usual consciousness of his inability to thank anybody at all in the way that they expected to be thanked. Helen and Mary never worried about such things. They delighted in kissing and hugging and multitudes of words. If only he might have had his presents by himself and then stolen out and said "thank you" to the lot of them and have done with it

He watched the breakfast table with increasing satisfaction: the large teapot with the red roses, the dark blue porridge-plates, the glass jar with the marmalade a rich yel

low inside it, the huge loaf with the soft pieces bursting out between the crusty pieces, the solid square of butter, so beautiful a color and marked with a large cow and a tree on top (he had seen once in the kitchen the wooden shape with which the cook made this handsome thing). There was also his own silver mug given him at his christening by Canan Trenchard, his godfather, and his silver spoon given him on the same occasion by Uncle Samuel. All these things glittered and glowed in the firelight and a kettle was singing on the hob, and Martha, the canary, was singing in her cage in the window. (No one really knew whether the canary were a lady or a gentleman, but the name had been Martha after a beloved housemaid now married to the gardener, and the sex had followed the name.)

There were also all the other familiar nursery things. The hole in the Turkey carpet near the bookcase, the rocking-horse very shiny where you sit and very Christmas-tree-like as to his tail, the dolls' house now deserted because Helen was too old and Mary too clever, the pictures of "Church on Christmas Morning" (every one with his mouth very wide open singing a Christmas hymn with holly), "Dignity and Impudence" after Landseer, "The Shepherds and the Angels" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade". So packed was the nursery with history for Jeremy that it would have taken quite a week to relate it all. There was the spot where he had bitten the Jampot's fingers-for which deed he had afterwards been slippered by his father, there the corner where they stood for punishment (he knew exactly how many ships with sails, how many ridges of waves and how

many setting suns there were on that especial piece of corner wall-paperthree ships, twelve ridges, two and a half suns)-there was the place where he had broken the ink-bottle over his shoes and the carpet, there the window where Mary had read to him once when he had toothache, and he had not known whether her reading or the toothache agonized him the more-and so on, an endless sequence of sensational history. His reminiscences were cut short by the appearance of Gladys with the porridge. Gladys who was only the kitchen-maid, but was, nevertheless, stout, breathless from her climb and the sentiment of the occasion, produced from her deep pocket a dirty envelope which she laid upon the table.

"Many 'appy returns, Master Jeremy"-giggle, giggle. "Lord save us if I 'aven't gone and forgotten they spunes," and she vanished. The present-giving had begun.

He had an instant's struggle as to whether it were better to wait until all the presents had accumulated or whether he would take them separately as they arrived. The dirty envelope lured him. He advanced towards it and seized it. He could not read very easily the sprawling writing on the cover, but he guessed that it said, "From Gladys to Master Jeremy". Within was a marvelous card, tied together with glistening cord and shining with all the colors of the rainbow. It was apparently a survival from Christmas as there was "A Church in Snow and a Peal of Bells"; he was, nevertheless, very happy to have it.

After this introduction events moved swiftly. First Helen and Mary appeared, their faces shining and solemn and mysterious, Helen

self-conscious

and Mary staring through her spectacles like a profound owl.

Because Jeremy had known Mary ever since he could remember, he was unaware that there was anything very peculiar about her. But in truth she was a strange-looking child. Very thin, she had a large head with big outstanding ears, spectacles and thin yellow hair pulled back and "stringy". Her large hands were always red and her forehead was freckled. She was as plain a child as you were ever likely to see, but there was character in her mouth and eyes, and although she was only seven years old, she could read quite difficult books (she was engaged at this particular time upon "Ivanhoe") and she was a genius at sums.

The passion of her life, as the family were all aware, was Jeremy, but it was an unfortunate and uncomfortable passion. She bothered and worried him, she was insanely jealous; she would sulk for days did he ever seem to prefer Helen to herself; no one understood her, she was considered a "difficult child, quite unlike any other Cole except possibly Samuel, Mr. Cole's brother, who was an unsuccessful painter and therefore 'odd'."

As Mary was at present only seven years of age, it would be too much to say that the family was afraid of her. Aunt Amy's attitude was: "Well, after all, she's sure to be clever when she grows up, poor child"; and, although the parishioners of Mary's father always alluded to her as "the ludicrous Cole child", they told awed little stories about the infant's mental capacities and concluded comfortably, "I'm glad Alice (or Jane or Matilda or Anabel) isn't clever like that. They overwork when they are

young and then when they grow up .

Meanwhile Mary led her private life. She attached herself to no one but Jeremy, she was delicate and suffered from perpetual colds; she, therefore, spent much of her time in the nursery, reading, her huge spectacles close to the page, her thin legs like black stocks stuck up on the fender in front of the fire or curled up under her on the window-seat.

Very different was Helen. Helen had a mass of black hair, big black eyes with thick eyelashes, a thin white neck, little feet and already an eye to "effects" in dress. She was charming to strangers, to the queer curates who haunted the family hall, to poor people and rich people, to old and young people. She was warm-hearted but not impulsive, intelligent but not clever, sympathetic, but not sentimental, impatient but never uncontrolled. She liked almost everyone and almost everything, but no one and nothing mattered to her very deeply; she liked going to church, always learnt her Collect first on Sunday and gave half her pocket money to the morning collection. She was generous but never extravagant, enjoyed food but was not greedy. She was quite aware that she was pretty, and might one day be beautiful, and she was glad of that, but she was never silly about her looks.

When Aunt Amy, who was always silly about everything, said in her presence to visitors, "Isn't Helen the loveliest thing you ever saw?" she managed by her shy self-confidence to suggest that she was pretty, that Aunt Amy was a fool, and life was altogether very agreeable, but that none of these things were of any great importance. She was very good friends with Jeremy, but she

played no part in his life at all. At the same time she often fought with him, simply from her real deep consciousness of her superiority to him. She valued her authority and asserted it incessantly. That authority had until last year been unchallenged, but Jeremy now was growing. She had, although she did not as yet realize it, a difficult time before her.

Helen and Mary advanced with their presents, laid them on the breakfast table and then retreated to watch the effect of it all.

"Shall I now?” asked Jeremy. "Yes, now," said Helen and Mary. There were three parcels, one large and "shoppy", two small, and bound with family paper, tied by family hands with family string. He grasped immediately the situation; the "shoppy" parcel was bought with mother's money, and only "pretended" to be from his sisters; the two small parcels were the very handiwork of the ladies themselves, the same having been seen by all eyes at work for the last six months, sometimes, indeed, under the cloak of attempted secrecy, but more often because weariness or ill-temper made them careless in the full light of day.

His interest was centered almost entirely in the "shoppy" parcel, which by its shape might be "soldiers", but he knew the rules of the game, and, disregarding the large, ostentatious brown-papered thing, he went magnificently for the two small, incoherent bundles.

He opened them: a flat, green table center with a red pattern of roses, a thick table napkin-ring worked in yellow worsted-these were revealed.

"Oh," he cried, "just what wanted!" (Father always said that on his birthday.)

"Is it?" said Mary and Helen. "Mine's the ring," said Mary. "It's dirty, rather, but it would have got dirty anyway afterward." She watched anxiously to see whether he preferred Helen's.

He watched them nervously, lest he should be expected to kiss them. He wiped his mouth with his hand instead, and began rapidly to talk: "Jampot will know now which mine is. She's always giving me the wrong one. I'll have it always, and the green thing, too."

"It's for the middle of a table," Helen interrupted.

"Yes, I know," said Jeremy hurriedly. "I'll always have it, too-like Mary's-when I'm grown up and I say, shall I open the other

all

now?" "Yes, you can," said Helen and Mary, ceasing to take the central place in the ceremony-spectators now, and eagerly excited.

But Mary had a last word.

"You do like mine, don't you?" "Of course, like anything!" She wanted to say "better than Helen's?" but restrained herself.

"I was ever so long doing it; I thought I wouldn't finish it in time." He saw with terror that she meditated a descent upon him; a kiss was in the air. She moved forward, then, to his extreme relief, the door opened and the elders, arriving, saved him.

There were father and mother, Uncle Samuel and Aunt Amy, all with presents, faces of birthday tolerance and "do-as-you-please-today-dear" expressions.

The Reverend Herbert Cole was forty years of age, rector of St. James's, Polchester, during the last ten years, and marked out for greater preferment in the near future. To be a rector at thirty is unusual, but he