‹ WELL, I will take you up to see Flora this evening. I have told them that I am going to bring you, and they will be very pleased to make your acquaintance.'

'I shall be delighted, old man, to see the girls and the old birds, and all the rest of them.'

'Yes, and you will find it a regular nest of singing birds.'

were

Jack Burnett and I were the oldest of friends. We had been at school and at college together, and such ties are among the most enduring in the world. For three years Jack and I lived on the same staircase at Oxford. He breakfasted in my rooms, or I in his, every day during term-time, save of course when we breakfasting with other chums. We never had a serious dispute in the world, never a case of the raised voice or heightened colour. All our small secrets were open ones. Consequently when Jack got engaged he being a clerk in Somerset House-I was speedily informed of the circumstances. I had never seen the young lady, however, beyond her photograph; which was prepossessing enough in all conscience. I had been articled to a lawyer, and was now CHRISTMAS, '80.

engaged as a clerk in the office, in the north of England, and did not often get to town; and even when I was in London, the proverbial selfishness of lovers kept them together, and I was shut out of the little paradise of that far western square. It was only a little, little square in the far, far west; but, according to Jack, it was the abode of bliss. But the paradise had its drawback in the presence of the demon of impecuniosity. The Delormes had to cut things extremely fine. The drawback was the greater, as Jack's official salary was only ninety pounds, rising ten pounds a year. I thought myself a poor man, but I was affluence itself compared with Jack. We calculated that he I would have to wait at least fifteen years before he could marry Flora.

How well I remember that summer evening, when I first went to Weston-square and there met my fate! It was not exactly a square. There was a Cambridge man who was once asked to dine in Eatonsquare. As soon as he got there he turned round and went home again. You asked me to dine in a square,' he said reproachfully to

B

his intended host; 'but when I got there it was only a parallelogram.' Weston-square hardly came under the denomination of any mathematical figure. But in the centre there were turf and flower-beds, great masses of flowering plants, and at this time the air was laden with the fairest scent of lilacs. There was a pretty little garden in front of a low two-storied house, the little drawing-room of which showed flowers and birds through the muslin-curtains. And then I was introduced to Fanny. If this story is not all about Fanny, it is none the less to be understood that Fanny became all and everything to me. The only thing that I could never make out was why Jack should have been such a dolt as to have fallen in love with Flora when he had a chance of falling in love with Fanny. Jack himself assured me subsequently, and in great confidence, that for several weeks he had loved both sisters with an equal degree of intensity. It was only accident which decided that oscillating balance. It was a particularly pretty dress, white muslin with wildflowers, aided by a song of peculiar archness, that determined the point. At least this was the account which he chose to give, although Mrs. Jack that was to be always denied its authenticity, and said that importunities had gone to a very extreme length, indeed, before that particular evening.

I suppose, to indorse Jack's language, there never had been such a nest of singing birds as that to which my destiny had led me. The old birds, by which I mean the very honoured parents of Fanny and

Flora, were very musical. The old lady played exquisitely, and the old man accompanied her -also exquisitely-on the flute. Mrs. Delorme was an Italian by birth; but she had been absent for

so many years from her native country that she spoke the language far less well than did her daughters. I imagined, however, that this Italian ancestry had something to do with this brilliant music. You might go to many a public concert and not hear voices so good as those of the Delorme girls, and they sang with the passion and gesture of born musicians.

Music was the order of the evening. Directly the introduction was effected, the girls needed no persuasion to come to the piano, and poured forth gem after gem from oratorio and opera with a skill and vigour that transcended all my conceptions of what might be done this way. Jack professed to be able to sing, which he did, according to his lights. I was not able to sing myself, which gave me more leisure for falling in love with Fanny. It was easy to see, by various signs visible to the observer, that the Delormes were not overburdened with the good things of this world. There was only one domestic, and she was taking an evening out; and indeed it was impossible for them, as they told me, to have any domestic who did not have a great many evenings out. But poverty has many gifts and graces that in the eyes of lovers at least-can make it absolutely enchanting. We had a simple substantial supper; the cool salad and cold meat, and jug of foaming beer, were brought in by the young ladies themselves; and Fanny lighted our cigarettes for us, and, out of innocent bravado, offered to smoke one herself. Old Delorme produced a square bottle and some limes, and, though I think that we would rather have gone back to the music, held us with his cheerful talk. It was in the style of the Vicar of Wakefield's parties; perhaps not much