Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine. Mrs. Gordon Smythies

Miss Adelaide, who is absorbed in the enjoyment of a ruddy ribstone pippin, turns her blooming freckled face to the speaker, and answers pleasantly, though a little indistinctly—

"I'm to marry a gentleman, brother Hal? Well, I guess I've no particular objection! Whenever he comes, he will find me ready to do him homage, and no mistake! Can't you tell me more about him? 'A gentleman' is rather vague. Is he to be rich, poor, or something between? Am I to share his gentility in a Belgravian mansion or a suburban villa?"

"The oracle does not say. I can't tell you any more, Addie. I've come nearer the point with the others, though. Pauline is to be a soldier's bride, Goggles a policeman's!"

"Don't you believe him, Addie!" burst in Goggles, a pale delicate-looking child of twelve, with large protruding eyes and a painfully inquiring turn of mind. "He cheated horribly; he ran the policeman in before the tailor the second time, and left out the sailor."

"I didn't, miss—I did it quite fairly. You had four chances; you got the tinker once and the policeman three times. You're to marry a bobby—there's no hope for you!"

"I won't, I won't, I won't!" she retorts passionately, angry tears welling into her big, foolish eyes. "I won't marry a policeman, Hal! I'd rather die an old maid ten times over."

"First catch your policeman, my dear," chimes in Pauline, languidly waving aside a swarm of gnats dancing round her beautiful dusky head. "You'll not find many of that ilk sneaking round our larder, I can tell you!"

"I don't care whether I do or not. I won't marry a—"

"That will do, Lottie; we have had quite enough of this nonsense," interposes Addie, suddenly and unexpectedly assuming the tones of a reproving elder sister. "You came out here to study, and I don't think either you or Pauline has read that French exercise once, though you promised Aunt Jo you would have it off by heart for her this afternoon. Give me the book; I'll hear you. Translate 'I am hungry; give me some cheese.'"

"Je suis faim; donnez-moi du—du—"

"No; wrong to begin with. It is J'ai faim, 'I have hunger.'"

"'I have hunger!'" grumbles Lottie. "That just shows what a useless humbugging language French is! Fancy any one but an idiot saying, 'I have hunger,' instead of—"

"Don't talk so much. 'Have you my brother's penknife?'"

"Avez-vous mon frère's plume-couteau?"

Miss Lefroy tosses back the tattered Ahn in speechless disgust.

"Never mind, Goggles; I'll give you a sentence to translate," whispers Hal teasingly. "Listen! Esker le policeman est en amour—eh? That's better than anything in an old Ahn or Ollendorff, isn't it? Esker le poli—"

"Hal, do leave your sister alone, and attend to your own task. I don't believe you have got that wretched sum right yet, though you have been at it all the morning."

"And such a toothsome sum too!" says Pauline, leaning forward and reading aloud the problem inscribed on the top of the cracked greasy

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