so we will not talk about it now, we will have our breakfast."

Margaret obeyed this restriction for a little while, but her thoughts were still busy on the same subject. She noticed too that her aunt had not taken any thing for her breakfast but an occasional sip of coffee. Presently she looked up in the midst of eating her egg, and laying down her spoon said

"Aunt Ellen, I am afraid I am not so glad as I ought to be."

"You will be glad by and by, dear Margaret."

"Well, perhaps I shall, but somehow it seems as if I could not be glad to go away from you, not even to papa and mamma, and Ada. I do like this old house so too, and the garden, and the chickens, and poor old Tiney, and everything else." Then, after a pause, she continued, "I suppose, aunt Ellen, that papa and mamma will have a much finer house than this to live in?"

"I should think it most likely, or they will not have a very fine one," replied Mrs. Shirley, again smiling.

"But fine houses don't make people happy," remarked Margaret in a wise tone. "Nor do they make them unhappy," replied Mrs. Shirley. "You remember what your little hymn says, Margaret, that—

'Happiness dwells in the temper within,
And not in the outward estate.''

"Is mamma like you, aunt Ellen?" was Margaret's next question.

"No, she is much taller, and when I knew your mamma, Margaret, she was very

beautiful."

"Then I suppose Ada is beautiful too, as she has always lived with mamma.'

"I do not know that that would follow as a matter of course," said Mrs. Shirley, smiling; "however, once when your papa wrote, I remember that he said Ada was very like your mamma.”

"I am not at all beautiful, am I, aunt Ellen?" said Margaret, glancing, as she spoke, at the chimney glass opposite.

"God has not seen fit to give you any large share of outward beauty, my child," replied Mrs. Shirley; "but if you strive for

it, you may gain a kind of beauty which is of far greater value. Mere beauty of face and form, unless there be love to Christ, with goodness and virtue within, is as worthless as it is short-lived and deceptive; but beauty of the heart and mind can make even the plainest face attractive, and will still retain its bloom when outward beauty is faded and gone." "Do you think Ada is good, aunt Ellen?" said Margaret.

"I hope, dear Margaret, she may have learned to love and obey the Lord Jesus; certainly I know of nothing in her to the contrary. I hope that she and you will be sisters in Christ, and in all that is good and excellent, as well as sisters in name."

"It will be very nice to have a sister certainly, won't it?" said Margaret. "We can learn our lessons together, and play together, and save up our money to make clothes for the infant school children: yes, all that will be very nice, only I wish Ada could come and live here for you to teach us, aunt Ellen; don't you think papa and mamma would let

her?"

C

Mrs. Shirley sighed deeply as she answered that she thought such a thing was not likely. Margaret heard the sigh, but she little suspected its cause. She did not know that at that moment her aunt was taking a glance into the future, and that she sighed as she thought of the many temptations to err from the right path, which she feared might be in store for the child whom she had so long loved and cherished as her own.

Mrs. Shirley was, as we have said, a sincere Christian, and had endeavoured to bring Margaret up in accordance with the principles by which her own actions were guided. Her brother, though he both loved and admired her for her goodness, differed widely from her on the topics which in her eyes were all-important; while his wife, unless greatly changed from what she once was, she knew to be a thorough woman of the world, leading a sort of butterfly existence which fashionable life demands, and as unfitted for the task as she was unlikely to make the attempt to lead Margaret onward in the path in which her footsteps had hitherto been directed. She

sighed, too, as she thought of the difficult position in which the poor child would be placed, well knowing that many things which she had hitherto been taught to look upon as wrong or even sinful, because they were so in God's sight, would, in her father's house, not only be lightly regarded, but even spoken of with admiration, while the amiabilities and excellencies of her disposition, which she had so carefully nourished and fostered as lovely flowers, hereafter to blossom in beauty and fragrance, would meet with no encouragement, but on the contrary would, she feared, soon be suffered either to run waste, or be left to be overgrown with unlovely and hurtful weeds, whose seeds, notwithstanding all the pains she had hitherto taken to destroy them, she well knew still remained within her heart,

"But it is wrong of me, very wrong," thought she, as she sat thus meditating within herself, "to be thus distrustful of the love and care of my heavenly Father; cannot he who kept Noah in the midst of an ungodly world, who watched over Daniel, surrounded as he was by all the pomp and splendour of