people the choice of their children's names, or refusing to call them by them! They might as well limit them to wearing ugly colours or singing ugly tunes, as to choosing ugly names !"

CHAPTER III.

Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate

A duel in the form of a debate.

COWPER.

MISS CLAIRVAUX had left the room, and Eleanor, standing on a chair was busily occupied in arranging the books, and now and then reading a pleasant snatch in them, when Claudia opened the door and announced Mr. Debenham.

Lightly as a bird from a spray did Eleanor descend from her perch, and shyly bow as a gentleman entered whom she at once recognised as one of her fellow-travellers of

the preceding day. He, too, seemed, after a second look, to have a dim perception of having recently seen her, and said rather awkwardly, "oh! good morning, ma'am."

Eleanor was about to retreat, when she upset a row of the British Essayists, which were not yet replaced. With an exclamation at her own awkwardness, she began hastily to scramble them together; and Mr. Debenham, laying aside his hat and stick, was preparing to assist her, when Miss Clairvaux entered the room.

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Debenham," said she cheerfully. "Eleanor, you need not run away. Mr. Debenham, I have to thank you for a beautiful brace of birds; but I have a bone to pick with you too. with you too. How came you to wrap them up in a copy of the Browbeater, a paper that I never allow to come into my house? Oh fie, Mr. Debenham! I am ashamed of you for taking it in."

Why, Miss Clairvaux, a man must have

VOL. I.

E

"Worse and worse! much worse! Now you are out of the frying-pan into the fire! If I were the licenser, and obliged to license such papers at all, they should come out on Monday, instead of desecrating the sabbath."

So.

"Ha, ha, ha!"

"Ah, you may laugh, but it should be It should, indeed."

"You are too hard on a paper you never read."

"Nay, I looked through the number you sent, just to see of what stamp it was."

"Why, the readers of the worst book that ever was written might make that excuse," said Mr. Debenham laughing, "and pretend they only ran through it just to see of what stamp it was."

Exactly so, and a great many do, I'm

afraid."

Well, but what harm did you find in the Browbeater ?"

"I found in it a defence of sabbath-breaking, with a sneer at the Pharisaical people who keep the Lord's day holy."

"Oh, but there are so many ways of keeping it."

"That is quite true; but we may be quite sure that those who open shops, and keep officials at their desks, and send haymakers to work on Sundays, don't keep it at all. And with all their cry about not robbing the poor man of his amusements, they are robbing the poor man of his only day's rest."

Well, at any rate you'll own I don't do any of those things."

Oh, I'm not speaking against any one in particular, only against the Browbeater."

"But if you dislike it so much, why did you read it ?" said he, still laughing.

"It is my duty to see what comes into the honse. If I see a phial, or a little packet