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her into the garden. In it he walked up and down a rugged path with her.

Dorothy was accustomed to be taken into confidence by the men and boys who formed her family. She was the only female person not an hireling at Bucklands, and was a grave and wise damsel for her years. If he had had a wife Jasper England would have discussed with her the matter at this time occupying his thoughts. It was a thing for a woman to carry to a successful issue. As it was the woman in little Dorothy was bringing her influence to bear upon it. Jasper looked at his little daughter, and she returned his look as who should say:

"Speak, sir, and as the only woman of your family, hold me ready to reply."

Jasper then spoke.

"Thy brother John mightily affections an empty purse, Doll," he said.

John, as his sister knew him, was happier with a full purse than an empty one. The little girl's soul was not a clod, but, on the other hand so far was Dorothy from being made of moonshine that this feature in her brother did not seem to her to redound to his discredit. She replied to this effect, and her father noticed that the allusion to Alce Steptoe contained in his speech had passed unobserved. He stopped in his walk, Dorothy followed suit, and the man and child looked at one another.

The strong light of early afternoon flooded the little girl's face. It was a good face rather than a pretty one; the well-shaped features were somewhat too large, and the child's fair skin was densely freckled. The goodness in the face was especially noticeable in the eyes which, while bravely opened, had still a young dreamfulness in them which explained the circumstance that innuendo, even of the broadest, was wasted upon Dorothy England.

Jasper grunted, half with pleasure, then he made some remarks on the

self-evident in the weather, to which Dorothy listened, and at intervals responded with a courtesy born of habit.

Meanwhile events in the parlor were taking a course which, by one of life's little ironies, Jasper England had himself made it possible for them to take.. In other words, John was enjoying a monopoly of Alce which it would not have been possible for him to enjoy if her admirer Dorothy had been nearer at hand.

IV.

A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL.

Propinquity is so great a factor in. love that it was not without much justification that Jasper England concluded that his son John would not sue in vain for the hand of Penelope Steptoe. He and she had grown up in the same countryside, and while she was on all hands allowed to be vastly handsome, opinion was equally unanimous concerning him as a very pretty fellow. It was not in the nature of things, as they presented themselves to even the least conventional minds in rural England of Georgian days, that. the friendship existing between such a couple should not some springtide deepen into love; and while no surprise was felt that Penelope Steptoe refused suitor after suitor, John England not having yet made an offer for her hand, it was quite as little deemed strange that John England took things leisurely, there being no ground evident for him to deem haste necessary.

In a word, prior to the coming upon the scene of Alce, the marriage between John and Penelope had been a foregone conclusion with every one-themselves not excepted. Contrary-wise, when ultimately it did not take place, every one with the exception of themselves experienced poignant disappointment. John who, had events taken a

slightly different course, would have willingly led Penelope to the altar, felt the elatement natural to one who, having known a good thing, has come to know a better. Penelope, the while, who would have cheerfuly cast in her lot with John, thus obliging a number of persons, and not disobliging herself, was so far from seeing in him "all the gentlemen in the world" (to cite her own spirited expression) that, on its becoming manifest that John loved her cousin Alce, she very gracefully played the new part assigned to her.

It has been said that the parlor at Bucklands, even subsequent to the withdrawal from it of Jasper England and his daughter, presented a well-filled appearance. After a few moments' sojourn there, it was borne in on Penelope that there were five persons too many present, being herself and four of the family England. She forthwith proposed to Ralph England that he should make her acquainted with "the southern hound."

This was the newest canine acquisition at Bucklands, and the fame of it under the name applied to it by Penelope was great.

The face of Ralph England became an illumination. He was the junior by only one year of John, but was so curiously youthful-looking that he might have passed for a seventeen-year-old lad. This appearance was, in part, the result of his frail build, which contrasted oddly with the sturdy make of his five brothers and his sister; in part it had connection with the circumstance that his face was of a girlish beauty, and extraordinarily ingenuous.

Time out of mind the second son at Bucklands had adopted the calling of a clerk in holy orders, and Ralph, the period of whose ordination was now near at hand, was about to become with his true title what he had been since childhood by his nickname "Parson." This name, at first used with some

irony, had long ceased to be invested with that attribute, and it entirely accorded with the gentle face of the bearer of it.

A striking diffidence in Parson emphasized the fact that he was a younger son, and a rumor had it that even his little brother George patronized the theologian. Be that as it may, it certainly seldom fell to Parson's share to be employed in any important function when John was at home. His great affection for his brother robbed this thing of bitterness, and made him truly thankful when, as now and again, honorable employment as assigned to him. Shy as he was, he would not have presumed to offer his escort to the kennels to Penelope Steptoe, and when that young gentlewoman honored him by desiring it, he was simple fellow enough to look as happy as he felt.

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With a spring in his step he led the way to the stables, conscious that his three young brothers in the rear (they followed to watch the play of feature in Penelope when she should be made acquainted with the southern hound) were burlesquing his mien and step, but consoled by the belief that Penelope was unaware of this. He did not speak, because he had nothing to say which he deemed worth saying, in this respect differing from his brother George, whose critical standard was lower, and who, encouraged to speak by having observed that there was mirth in a glance of protest which Penelope had found an opportunity of directing at him, said in shrill, young treble:

"Do you notice, Miss Penelope, that a mustachio is growing on Parson's lip?"

"Indeed I do, George," Penelope answered, "and though it is not large, 'tis larger, I am sure, than the mustachio of the cricket."

This addendum silenced the wag in George, who was profoundly interested

in zoology, and he said what resolved itself into a statement that it was new to him to hear that an idea prevailed that a cricket had a mustachio.

"So 'tis to me," Penelope said, drily, "but there is a book I have read in which 'tis written that this insect has upper and lower lips, with all the other parts of the mouth, and many of them hairy, which I judge to be the learned way of saying that it has a mustachio." George lapsed into a deeper gravity, then a lively conversation took place between him and his brothers, and by the time that the kennels were reached it became manifest that these three members of the party had fallen away. They had gone in search of a cricket.

Thus did ingenious Penelope contrive that Parson's pleasure in showing off the southern hound should not be spoilt by those unsparing commentators, his brothers.

John and Alce, the while, in a blissful téte-a-tête, were laboriously making conversation. It began by Alce's saying, with a rather disingenuous dubiousness in her tone, considering that she had certain knowledge on the point at issue:

"My cousin Penelope is gone away, I think, Mr. England."

"I think she is, Miss Steptoe," John England replied, peering round the room to give color to an answer which took the form of a surmise.

Alce showed no intention of taking again the initiative, so John was fain to do so.

"You are come to the Quay," he said -the reference being to Bridlington Quay "for the purpose of sea-bathing, are you not, Miss Steptoe?"

Alce had not come to Bridlington Quay for this purpose, but had come because her cousin was spending the summer season there, and had invited her. Penelope had from her childhood's days spent the summer season at Bridlington Quay; hence her close

intimacy with the England family, to whom she had never been Miss Steptoe. It was to compensate her for the fact that her grandmother was unable to enter into her pursuits with the zest of former days, that Alce had been invited to make a sojourn with her, on the understanding that if friendly relations established themselves between the girls, they should continue to reside together.

Alce answered John to this effect. "I judge the Quay pleases you," he blundered on. ""Tis an agreeable and healthful place, and there is now a considerable resort to it of genteel company."

This style of phrasing was not accounted so execrable at the end of the eighteenth century, as it should be at the end of the nineteenth, and it did not jar upon Alice Steptoe, though the place thus eulogized was so far from pleasing her that she answered:

"I have when at Bridlington Quay the feeling which I believe I should have in the metropolis, where, even if you meet your old acquaintances, I am told, they behave very cool and distant, and in some respects unfriendly. This, I suppose, is always so where too many persons are together busied in business or in pleasure."

As Alce ventilated this idea, her face, at most times earnest, expressed a depth of thoughtfulness which greatly increased its beauty.

"I think your cousin Penelope, Miss Steptoe, does not subscribe to these opinions," said John, tentatively.

"I am sure she does not," was answered. "It is for this that we are sworn friends."

John, who perfectly understood this speech, requested a clearer statement of the theory involved in it.

"Why, sure you know, Mr. England," Alce said, quietly, "that love delights in opposites?"

"I have heard the adage which says

so, Miss Steptoe," John replied, "but I believe that love is that which looks for its identical, as near as identical can be, between a man and a woman."

Alce blushed vividly.

"I spoke, Mr. England, of two cousins-young ladies," she said, in a note of protest.

"You did so, Miss Steptoe," John England conceded, and then he did a thing which a young Georgian gentleman under given conditions could do, and bate none of his dignity. He fell

The Leisure Hour.

upon his knees and vowed that he would not rise until Alce gave him answer-yea or nay-to a proposal which, as he worded it, ran:

"Will you, Miss Steptoe, consent to become the wife of a gentleman entirely and only your lover?"

Alce said neither yea nor nay to this, not from hardness of heart, but from surprise induced by the appearance upon the threshold, at this moment, of Jasper England, by whom the door had been opened noiselessly.

(To be continued.)

Elsa D'Esterre-Keeling.

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS.

The recent speeches delivered by Lord Rosebery in the House of Lords have created in the country a more profound impression than the utterances of any public man since the outbreak of the war. The circumstances of his position, the fact that he has filled the highest office in the state, and that he was a successful foreign minister at a time when he had to encounter exceptional difficulties, rendered all the greater by the apathy of the country and the perilous ignorance of European affairs which was the distinguishing mark of many of his leading colleagues, lend exceptional authority to his warnings and counsels. Any one acquainted with European politics and with the real claims of continental statesmen, will not be inclined to assert that Lord Rosebery exaggerated the gravity of the crisis in which England now stands. The large number of persons who are not habitual observers of the movement of opinion in Europe, but who have a general view that England is surrounded by envious and hostile neighbors, have observed that some of the most serious and weighty of his arguments are corroborated by admis350

LIVING AGE.

VOL. VII.

sions and statements which have fallen from the lips of more than one responsible minister of the crown. Every one knows that at the present moment the country is almost denuded of troops; almost every available man and gun has been sent to South Africa, or is about to be conveyed there. Most men realize that it is, at least, possible that an attempt at interference with the policy of England in South Africa, and with the setlement which her interests in that region demand, may be made by a combination of European powers. That any such interference should be resisted at all risks and hazards, and with the utmost firmness, is the settled conviction of nine out of every ten men who desire that England should maintain her position amongst the nations of the earth and carry on her Imperial mission. How this interference is to be resisted, or how it is to be effectually prevented, is the pressing question of the hour.

There are only two possible ways by which the danger may be averted, for I can hardly consider the advice that England should practically withdraw from her position in South Africa, and

It

conclude a peace which would preserve the practical independence of the two South African Republics, as one that can be followed. Such a course would obviously lead to consequences so farreaching in mischief, that the deplorable results which were the outcome of the disgraceful arrangements of 1881 and the feeble concessions of 1884 would be insignificant in comparison. seems most unlikely that it would be tolerated by the country, and it is hardly within the domain of practical politics. But if that advice has no chance of being listened to, Great Britain must be prepared, in order to resist international pressure, either to enter into alliances of various kinds, or to follow the more manly policy, and the one which will surely commend itself to the political instinct of the nation, of preserving complete independence of action, and so arming as to be able to maintain that independence against the world.

The days during which it might have been possible to obtain alliances on the Continent, which would have stood the strain of reverse or of incompatibility of interests, are past. I am inclined to doubt whether they ever were really present. History teaches us the lightness and ease with which nations abandon allies if they can thereby serve their own immediate interests. The Peace of Basel and the arrangement of Tilsit, will at once occur to the minds of every one. The latter especially is a striking instance in point. On the 26th of April, 1807, Russia and Prussia concluded the Convention of Bartenstein. The high contracting parties solemnly agreed that neither would lay down their arms till the power of Napoleon was broken in Germany, and the French driven across the Rhine. A few short weeks passed over, and, on the 14th of June, the anniversary of Marengo, Napoleon won Friedland. The Emperor Alexander of Russia immedi

ately lost heart, and completely sacrificed the interests of his ally, for whom he did not stipulate even respectful consideration. The real or supposed interests of a country must be considered, as the forces which will determine its action when real pressure is brought to bear. And from this it follows, that no nation can ever hold a great position in the world except by its own energy and its capacity for war. It can never reckon on assistance in an hour of difficulty or danger from the magnanimity and goodwill of its neighbors, nor has it any protection for riches or possessions, except its fighting strength. The law of antagonism is as universal in politics as in nature. If, then, a statesman contemplates an alliance with a foreign country, his first consideration should be, what interest the country in question has to form such an alliance, and how far the alliance would stand the strain of adverse circumstances. At the present moment, it is hard to see what interest any continental state, except Italy, has to conclude an alliance with England, though it is easy to imagine a state of things arising, should England take efficient steps to organize her military resources, which would soon force Germany, and, perhaps, other powers as well, to seek her goodwill and even make sacrifices to obtain it.

I have always myself held that a good understanding between Germany and England is desirable in the interests of both countries; but I am firmly convinced that this will never be brought about by pursuing the lines of policy in regard to Germany which have been followed by successive governments in England for some years. There is no country in the world where so much hostile feeling exists to England as in Germany, and wherever Germans have been gathered together in any part of the world the news of what they describe with the exaggeration of

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