Phoebe, Junior. Oliphant Margaret

and took one child on each knee.

      “I hope you have enjoyed yourself, Ursula,” he said; “of course, we have missed you. Janey has done her best, but she is not very clever at housekeeping, nor does she understand many things that people require, as you have learned to do.”

      “Oh, I am so glad you have missed me!” said Ursula, “I mean sorry; I have enjoyed myself very, very much. The Dorsets were so kind, kinder than anybody ever was before.”

      “And, papa, they have sent me a new dress.”

      “And me too, papa,” chirruped little Amy on his knee.

      “You too, Mouse! it was very kind of them; and you went to the Tower and did all the lions, Ursula? that is the lot of country cousins, and the Dorsets would spare you nothing, I suppose.”

      “We went to much better things,” said Ursula, producing her theatres and her ball as she had done before. “And, oh, papa, I like them so much. I wish we lived a little nearer. Those poor little Indian children, I fear they will be too much for Cousin Anne; they look so pale and so peevish, not like our children here.”

      “Well, they are not pale at all events,” said Mr. May, putting them down; “run and play like good children. You will have heard that we have had something happening to us, even in this quiet place, while you were away.”

      “Oh, I was so astonished,” said Ursula, “but Reginald doesn't seem to like it. That is so odd; I should have thought he would have been overjoyed to get something. He used to talk so about having no interest.”

      “Reginald is like a great many other people. He does not know his own mind,” said Mr. May, his countenance overcasting. Ursula knew that sign of coming storms well enough, but she was too much interested to forbear.

      “What is a sinecure, papa?” she asked, her brother's last word still dwelling in her mind.

      “A piece of outrageous folly,” he cried, getting up and striding about the room, “all springing from the foolish books boys read now-a-days, and the nonsense that is put into their minds. Mean! it means that your brother is an ass, that is what it means. After all the money that has been spent upon him – ”

      “But, papa, we have not spent much, have we? I thought it was his scholarship?” said Ursula with injudicious honesty. Her father turned upon her indignantly.

      “I am not aware that I said we. We have nothing to spend upon any one, so far as I know. I said I – the only person in the house who earns any money or is likely to do so, if Reginald goes on in this idiotical way.”

      Ursula grew red. She was Mr. May's own daughter, and had a temper too. “If I could earn any money I am sure I would,” she cried, “and only too glad. I am sure it is wanted badly enough. But how is a girl to earn any money? I wish I knew how.”

      “You little fool, no one was thinking of you. Do a little more in the house, and nobody will ask you to earn money. Yes, this is the shape things are taking now-a-days,” said Mr. May, “the girls are mad to earn anyhow, and the boys, forsooth, have a hundred scruples. If women would hold their tongues and attend to their own business, I have no doubt we should have less of the other nonsense. The fact is everything is getting into an unnatural state. But if Reginald thinks I am going to maintain him in idleness at his age – ”

      “Papa, for Heaven's sake don't speak so loud, he will hear you!” said Ursula, letting her fears of a domestic disturbance overweigh her prudence.

      “He will hear me? I wish him to hear me,” said Mr. May, raising his voice. “Am I to be kept from saying what I like, how I like, in my own house, for fear that Reginald should hear me, forsooth! Ursula, I am glad to have you at home; but if you take Reginald's part in his folly, and set yourself against the head of the family, you had better go back again and at once. He may defy me, but I shall not be contradicted by a chit of a girl, I give you my word for that.”

      Ursula was silent; she grew pale now after her redness of hasty and unconsidered self-defence. Oh, for Cousin Anne to shield and calm her; what a difference it made to plunge back again thus into trouble and strife.

      “He thinks it better to be idle at his father's expense than to do a little work for a handsome salary,” said Mr. May; “everything is right that is extracted from his father's pocket, though it is contrary to a high code of honour to accept a sinecure. Fine reasoning that, is it not? The one wrongs nobody, while the other wrongs you and me and all the children, who want every penny I have to spend; but Reginald is much too fine to think of that. He thinks it quite natural that I should go on toiling and stinting myself.”

      “Papa, it may be very wrong what he is doing; but if you think he wants to take anything from you – ”

      “Hold your tongue,” said her father; “I believe in deeds, not in words. He has it in his power to help me, and he chooses instead, for a miserable fantastic notion of his own, to balk all my care for him. Of course the hospital was offered to him out of respect for me. No one cares for him. He is about as much known in Carlingford as – little Amy is. Of course it is to show their respect to me. And here he comes with his fantastic nonsense about a sinecure! Who is he that he should make such a fuss? Better men than he is have held them, and will to the end of the chapter. A sinecure! what does he call a sinecure?”

      “That is just what I want to know,” said Ursula under her breath, but her father did not, fortunately, hear this ejaculation. Reginald had gone out, and happily was not within hearing, and Mr. May calmed down by degrees, and told Ursula various circumstances about the parish and the people which brought him down out of his anger and comforted her after that passage of arms. But the commotion left him in an excitable state, a state in which he was very apt to say things that were disagreeable, and to provoke his children to wrath in a way which Ursula thought was very much against the scriptural rule.

      “Things in the parish are going on much as usual,” he said, “Mrs. Sam Hurst is as kind as ever.”

      “Indeed!” said Ursula with a suppressed snort of anger. Mr. May gave the kind of offensive laugh, doubly offensive to every woman, which men give when their vanity is excited, and when there is, according to the common expression, a lady in the case.

      “Yes, she is very kind,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “She has had the children to tea a great many times since you have been away. To show my sense of her kindness, you must ask her one of these days. A woman who understands children is always a valuable friend for a man in my position – and also, Ursula, for a girl in yours.”

      “She may understand children, but they are not fond of her,” said Ursula, with a gleam of malice which restored her father to good humour. He had no more idea of marrying a second time than of flying. He was tenderly attached in his way to his wife's memory, and quite sufficiently troubled by the number of dwellers in his house already; but he rather liked, as a good-looking man in his wane generally does, to think that he could marry if he pleased, and to hold the possibility over the heads of his household, as a chastisement of all their sins against him which he could use at any time. All the Mays grew hot and angry at the name of Mrs. Sam Hurst, and their fear and anger delighted their father. He liked to speak of her to provoke them, and partly for that, partly for other reasons of his own, kept up a decorous semi-flirtation with his neighbour who lived next door, and thus excited the apprehensions and resentment of the girls every day of their lives. When Ursula thought of Mrs. Sam Hurst she wished for the Dorsets no more. It was above all things, she felt, her duty to be here on the spot to defend the family from that woman's machinations. The idea put energy into her. She ceased to be tired, ceased to feel herself, “after her journey,” capable of nothing but sitting still and hearing of all that had been done since she went away.

      In the course of the evening, however, Ursula took advantage of a quiet moment to look into the dictionary and make herself quite safe about the meaning of the word sinecure. It was not the first time she had heard it, as may be supposed. She had heard of lucky people who held sinecures, and she had heard them denounced as evil things, but without entering closely into the meaning. Now she had a more direct interest in it, and it must be confessed that she was not at all frightened by the idea,