golden hair on the strand. Women have such a deft coaxing way of doing it.' 'How clever you are growing,' she answered, demurely. 'I shouldn't wonder that I made something of you now before I have done.' 'But, I have a dreadful secret to tell you, Maud, that not even your brother knows yet.' She would not believe in its dreadfulness, though she had to come nearer again before I found it possible to break it to her. 'Little Maud, it is not a poor charity schoolmaster this time who wants you for his wife; we have done with him now. It is a man who can make cabinet councils take him for their subject, and Lords and Commons discuss him and his doings. Yes, and they have offered him twelve thousand pounds down for his invention and such a post beside as that it will be his own fault if he be not a made man.' How her whole face sparkled. 'You proud man, you!' caressing my lucky left-hand coat sleeve, and thinking only of my good fortune and advancement. But when she, with a very wise little face, had considered it some time, she gave me an arch, shy, side glance. 'I didn't think you were such a great man. I am quite afraid of you.' And I had my revenge. 'You proud woman, you!' said I, for I saw this time she was pluming herself not a little, and I did not know which I liked most. I found as we went on talking that Lord Uxford had stood-as when has he not?-my very good friend that Christmas. 'Why, it is time to dress for dinner,' said she, very suddenly discovering the necessity. 'Three quarters of an hour,' I urged. To be immediately snubbed for my presumption. 'Well?"-And I collapsed, as you would have done too. I'll bring you a cup of tea myself,' she added, with reassuring patronage. 'And if you are a good boy we may come to you in the evening.' Which continued the programme for many evenings, until I could travel on crutches as far as the dining room. It turned out to be the approach of her brother, and not the approach of dinner, that sent her away. Almost immediately he came into the room, the 'Times' in his hand, 'Where is Maud?' 'Just gone;' and I tried to practise her demureness. 'I say, old chap, what's this in the "Times?" Here-the Secretary of the Admiralty's speech. What does it all mean?" I looked slowly down the page. 'Yes, I suppose, as usual, there were some to object; but they they have their money's worth, though it is I who say it. It means-why, it means that you were willing to take for a brother-in-law, and Maud was willing to take for a husband, a poor unknown man, who chances meanwhile to have become something else.' 'And you knew it?' 'I am not an ambitious fellow, Gurnel, but I have my ambitions. I confided my sister to you, a poor man, as I thought, and I felt it would be well with her. But I am glad of this-I am very glad of this.' 'Of course you are, old fellow. And, tell you what, I'm the happiest and luckiest dog alive.' His reply is not worth recording, for, to tell the truth, although I am sorry to have to confess it of one to be so nearly related to me, from this time we never could get Frank to speak rationally when one particular subject was approached. There was in the evening when Maud, going about the room with suspicions want of purpose, took up the 'Times' in a fit of equally suspicious abstraction, and sat down to it at the table-it was worth seeing Frank come quietly behind my little woman buried in the portentous paper, and with the most comical face read over her shoulder. 'What, Maud?" She started, and was in great confusion. 'Reading the parliamentary reports? I thought it was only the births, deaths, and marriages ladies ever cared for. Aha! Miss Maud.' Ho was told to 'Get away, you impertinent boy. But the paper was very one crutch, and came down, my wife on my arm, with none; for in the confusion some one pushed into my hand Lord Uxford's stout old oak stick; and when, on his return from church, I would have given it back, he bade me keep it; and I have used it, and it alone, ever since. 'And here it is,' said Mr. Duke, coming into the circle, and holding up the stick he always carried. 'It has an old friend's face now. I would not lose it for worlds. The giver, as you all know, is dead.' 'Uncle Frank's name is Frank,' said sturdy Cecil Heath, of six, astride a low stool by the fire. 'And mamma's name is Maud,' said a round-eyed damsel of five, edged on to the same stool, and paying infinite attention to the young gentleman, chiefly in the way of handing him various sweet morsels out of a marvellous red and silver bag. We all laughed. 'Ay, we laugh,' said Gurnel Duke, drily; 'but we men and women make our greatest discoveries much after the manner of these children.' 'It is all very nice of Gurnel,' said Mrs. Duke, coming forward to her husband's side, so that we noticed how like she was to what she had been described. There had been a period in the telling of the story when her face had been closely shaded by her hand; her husband had given her one swift glance, and then had kept his eyes steadily away from her. 'It is all very nice of your uncle,' she said, 'and very clever, to have written this all down and then to bring it against me. I was obliged to ask for luncheon that day as a diversion, or he would never have done staring at me. I shall write my version now-ready for next Valentine's, if you like; then you'll see what a goose he sometimes made of himself.' 'Appearances, my dear; do think of appearances,' laughed Mr. Duke. 'Ferrers,' so sharply as to bring Ferrers round as sharply; 'had you any valentine to-day besides what the postman brought and those delivered at the door?" Ferrers turned scarlet, and, singularly to relate, so did Flo. 'Ay, we laugh,' said Gurnel Duke, more drily still. And, sure enough, we all did fill up the pause with laughter-all except Flo and young Ferrers. And that is the story I heard told over the fire at the country house where I was staying. WINIFRED SOUTH. A A MONTH'S SOJOURN AT WILDBAD. FTER visiting in turn a whole series of the German Bads and Brünnens in the anxious quest of health, I resolved to repair to that most out-of-the-way resort for invalids, Wildbad-a spot far in the recesses of the Black Forest, where, nestled many many feet above the level of the sea, it rests in the shade and perfume of the pines. It is one of those places which, but for its hot springs, would probably have remained a village unknown to all Europeans save the Würtemburgers, for it is in the way to nowhere; and such an air of tristeness is there about it that the ordinary traveller would hasten through it, as a train does through a tunnel, rather than loiter in its cheerless solitudes. I never shall forget the strong sense of depression, bordering on melancholy, that I felt, and seemed to feel increasing as I drew near this most lonely retreat. Not the sun, as he shone down in all his splendour, nor the lively mountain torrent, as it hurried past me, no, nor yet the merry chirping of the feathered tribe, of which there was abundance, seemed to mitigate, at least to me, the gloom of the locality. Everything, on the contrary, wore, to my mind's eye, a funereal aspect. That sombre, unbroken mantle of pine forest, as it lay stretched along the hill-tops, looked like an extensive pall. The dress of the peasantry had something dismal about it. The oxen and the sheep were supplied with bells, whose notes resembled death-knells, while the very tread of these dumb creatures was solemn enough for the saddest of all ceremonials. But, after a spell of suffering one is prepared to forego all other considerations for the single one of health; and, martyr as I had been for months to rheumatic pains and aches, my mind was quite made up for any season of privation and self-denial that might help to rid me of my tormentor; so that, had Wildbad been tenfold as triste, I should have repaired to it and willingly spent there the period allotted for a cure. Accordingly, when I drove up to the door of the capital hotel (de l'Ours), it was with the determination to undergo at least a month of it; and I had certainly no reason to regret, when I came away, my sojourn in this lonely village. I have applied without hesitation the term 'capital' to the inn where I took up my quarters, knowing well that my passing word of encomium will be endorsed by all who have lodged at Klumpp's Hotel. How scrupulously clean the house itself! How excellent the fare! And then the landlord - poor fellow! since gone to his rest-what a model of a host was he, and how keen his appreciation of the English character! Three other large hotels there are, kept going solely by folks who come to bathe-Kurgasts,' as the Germans call them all full to overflowing in the season, one year being much the same as another, and no such thing being known as an abatement in the supply of visitors. The Government, too-that is to say, the King-must be making a good thing out of these same Kurgasts, for the springs and the baths are royal property, and every farthing you pay for the privilege of dipping goes into the royal coffers. These springs, like most of the hot-spring family, undertake to do great things, and to cure a whole multitude of the maladies to which humanity is subject. Not gout and rheumatism alone, by any means, but divers more disorders, are said to lie within the grasp of their healing power. Every form of nervous or cutaneous infirmity, and every kind of weakness, including even certain types of the cerebral, can, it is affirmel, be cured or alleviated by these wonder-working waters; and here, as elsewhere, traditions are abundant of the little short of miraculous achievements of this. modern Bethesda. The crowds that are said to have come to Wildbad upon crutches, and to have left those articles behind them on taking their departure, are so numerous that enough should by this time have accumulated to supply every cripple in Europe with a pair; and if some speculative man has not already turned this fact to profitable account, here assuredly is an opening for those disposed to deal wholesale in these appliances. Droll anecdotes are likewise told of invalids who have carried off another cure, different entirely from the one sought, the springs having seemingly taken in hand the wrong complaint and dealt effectively with it. A paralytic, I was assured, who had come to Wildbad with one eye fast closed, had gone away with both wide open, though such had not been his aim in bathing. His limbs were what he hoped would benefit; but his hopes, alas! in this respect, were doomed to disappointment, and the poor fellow returned home limping as he came. Powerless to effect the restoration desired, the springs did for him what they could, and gave him back his eye. The Wildbad doctors accordingly rarely ra if ever turn away an intending Kurgast. 'Give the waters,' they say, 'by all means a trial; they must benefit you somehow. If they don't cure this they will, perhaps, cure something else you may have wrong about you. Your sufferings, moreover, may be but symptoms, and these springs attack, not the symptoms but the disorders that cause them; so be not disheartened if you do not experience immediate relief. Slow, though thorough, is the cure; and it matters not though symptoms linger for a space, when we know the cause is disappearing.' The Kurgasts have the option of bathing in public or in private. Of course aristocrats prefer the more exclusive system, and give a wide berth to the crowd. If, however, you have a fancy for the public bath the doctors must first examine you, to see whether you are physically eligible for the company of other bathers. Certain distempers disqualify you for mingling with your fellows in the water; and if your skin, for instance, happens to be in an unhealthy state, your dips must be in private. Being of a sociable turn I went in for the public bath, my infirmities belonging happily to the incommunicable class, and so VOL. XV.-NO. LXXXVII. not such as to render me a dangerous companion. The public bath consists of a chamber, I should say, at a guess, some twenty feet by twenty, surrounded by a number of dressing and drying cells, the doors of which open into the water. At a depth of about two feet there is a soft bed of red sand, quite level, and very pleasant to the feel; and every here and there a crop of bubbles may be seen rising from the bottom, that indicate the position of the numerous springs from which the bath is constantly replenished. Habited in the regular bathing garment, I slipped in from my cell, the water feeling nice and warm; and though I cannot appeal to Fahrenheit or Centigrade for figures, the temperature must be somewhat over that of the blood, otherwise a chill would be experienced. All above the surface of the water is a mist, the vapour rising thickly to the roof, from whence, again, it keeps perpetually falling in big, cold drops upon the bathers' heads. To swim in water so shallow is, of course, out of the question; so you sit still on the sandy bottom, watching through the fog the hands of the clock to tell you when the time is up. Thus, with three parts of the body in the water, and about one-fourth enveloped in steam, the bather passes the half-hour or the hour prescribed in his case, inhaling all the while the mist surrounding him, and thus securing for the water an internal as well as an external form of application. Some dozen or so of afflicted fellow-mortals were already in the bath before me, on most of whom were looks that told of pain, while others seemed so hearty and well-favoured as to render their ailments matters of conjecture to the uninformed beholder. Amongst these latter was a burly Frenchman, who, despite my disguise, detected at a glance my nationality. 'You air from England, sair,' observed the discerning Mussoo. 'Yes, I am; but how did you guess that? Certainly not from my dress.' Ha! I do alvays know an Englishman ven I see him. 8 |