the neighbourhood. It was too respectable. There was not a scandal to be heard of, and Ellen discouraged even gossip-had not liked her asking Clara about her brother's intentions with regard to taking a house. Mrs. Torrance began to languish for a little excitement; and, lo! the excitement was at hand.

It came in the shape of a visit from Mr. Huntingdon and Clara, who called together to ask Mrs. Austin to take a stall at the forthcoming bazaar. The ladies of the congregation of St. Luke's had proposed a bazaar for the purpose of raising money for a spire to the church, which had been left unfinished as well as in debt. The debt was still crippling the modest income of Mr. Huntingdon, and he had given his consent to a mode of raising money which he was assured was by far the easiest and most successful. He was not very clear as to what it meant; but he was told that he need give himself very little trouble about it, the ladies would manage it all, with the assistance of the very active churchwardens, whom they had enlisted in the cause. Clara was quite clear about it, and did not like it; but did not think it wise to interfere against it. Ellen, too, was a novice at this sort of undertaking, and would have declined the honour, but her mother interfered. Mrs. Tabor was to take a stall, and there was nothing to hinder Ellen from doing so. It was just what Mrs. Torrance liked-plenty of work, and plenty of gossip and rivalry, and trying of spirits, and so the interview ended in Ellen accepting the post.

The preparations were warranted to take months, and did. Mrs. Torrance laid aside her curtains as much too homely, and took to all sorts of herculean labours, and Ellen who disliked fancy work, dutifully laboured under her directions, doing endless grounding, as the least objectionable, seeing that it left her free to follow her thoughts. Mrs. Tabor and Lucy were equally busy, and Fanny began works innumerable, which Ada was called upon to finish. The whole terrace was kept busy, and numerous other terraces, rows, and roads besides. It must have been a perfect boon to the neighbourhood in the employment of so many idle hands.

Endless were the resources, boundless the ingenuity of the workers. They did wonderful things in worsted, in beads, in silk, in thread, in straw, in paper. The new corner shop, opened by a pale, sadeyed widow with two slim, delicate girls in their first mourning, did an unexpected and increasing trade. The shop was named the "Fancy Repository," and had been in a state of extreme stagnation until the bazaar was inaugurated. But the widow had good taste and her girls had supple fingers, and besides supplying the materials above mentioned, they had to sit up many a night executing the work which their customers had planned and intended to finish,

and adopt as their own. So the widow was able to pay her Michaelmas rent when it was called for, and could see the rate-collector enter her shop without trembling where she stood, because the amount in her little money-box was so sadly inadequate. She even welcomed the rate-collector with a smile, and in her heart she blessed the bazaar, and in this instance, at least, it proved a blessing.

During the winter several working parties were held in the drawing-rooms of the little coterie of Park Villas, parties at which a variety of useful articles were manufactured by fair fingers, and thrown into a common stock to be divided among the stalk holders. They were very quiet parties, and the amount of work done was not inconsiderable; but though they were called "Bees," they had very little resemblance to the American institutions of that name, which last through a long summer day—nay, several of them-accomplish thoroughly some great piece of work, and require immense preparations in the way of providing sustenance for the workers. Here they had a dish of tea and some thin breadand-butter at four p.m., to enable them to go on for an hour or two. There was much reading, too, of "poems" and "selected passages,” generally by an elderly lady, and so thoroughly dull and decorous were the meetings, that Lucy Tabor, laughingly listening to Mrs. Torrance's animadversions, suggested, that, instead of 'Bees," they ought to be called "Drones."

But one occasion was illuminated by a novelty. Ada Lovejoy played and sang to the company, a larger one than usual, which had assembled at Mrs. Austin's. Her singing was, of course, very much admired, but one lady remarked rather loftily that she was too much like a public singer, and somehow it oozed out that to be a public singer was poor Ada's ambition, and she was thereupon privately tabooed, only, happily, Ada did not understand that it was so; her friends, however, understood it for her.

The next evening Ada spent at the Tabors', when Arthur Wildish was there, and she gravely informed him that she had made her debut-had appeared in public for the first time.

"And never told me," he said angrily, for some of the contemptuous things that had been said had reached his ears.

Instead of explaining her innocent little jest, Ada, resenting the tone in which he had spoken, chose to stand upon her girlish dignity. "Why should I tell you?" she said, raising her stately little head, and giving the least possible sniff with her delicate little nose, whereupon there ensued a pretty little lovers' quarrel; which, however, was not made up at parting as it ought to have been, in spite of Lucy Tabor's explanations.

(To be continued.)

365

ES, the present "French Hospital' the New Providence-was built nine years ago in the border-land beyond the Weaver's Garden, that great garden and pleasure-ground known as Victoria Park. It is the only garden left to the descendants of those old craftsmen who once dwelt in houses every one of which had its gay plot of flowers, its rustic arbour, or its quaint device of grotto work, built up of oddly-shaped stones and pearl-edged oyster-shells. Do you think there is now no remnant of the old French folk left ? Come for a stroll among the grand beds and plantations of this East-end playground, and you shall see. On holidays and, alas! on those days when (to use the expressive term handed down from prosperous times) the weaver is "at play" -that is to say, waiting for woof and weft, and so wiling away the sad and often hunger-bringing hours-you will see him, with his keen well-cut face, his dark appreciative eye, his long delicate hands, his well-brushed, threadbare coat and hat; and the mark of race is plainly to be noted in his intensity of look and his subdued patient bearing. He comes of a stock which had it not been of the hardiest and the most temperate and enduring in the world, would have disappeared a century ago. On Sunday mornings, when the bells are sounding round about him, he is to be met with lingering (with who shall say what inner sense of worship) by the strange shrubs and flowering plants, or standing with a pathetic look of momentary satisfaction on his lean, mobile face, to mark the rare glow and gush of colour made by the blooms in a "ribbon" device of flowers on a sunny border by a dark background of cedar. But come and see what his forefathers might have called, in their Scripture phraseology, "the remnant of the children of Israel;" the old inmates of that French Hospital founded so long ago when De Ruvigny was the beloved cousin of George I., and Philippe Menard preached at St. James's; when the Duchess de la Force brought donation after donation to the work, and Philippe Hervart, Baron d'Huningue gave £4,000, all in one splendid contribution, to the building fund. Could they have seen (who knows that they have not?) this great French chateau rising beyond the park palings in a neighbourhood fast filling with houses, but still open to the air that blows from the Weaver's Garden and from the great expanse of land leading towards the forest, they would have recogaised the familiar style of those grand mansions

which in France succeeded the castles of the feudal nobility when Henry Quatre was king. The high-pointed roof with its irregularly picturesque lines, the quaint towers and spires, the slate blue and purple, and rosy tints of colour in slope and wall and gable; the various combinations of form and hue changing with every point of view, make this modern copy of the old French chateau a wonderful feature in any landscape, and the unaccustomed visitor seeing it as it stands there in its own ornamental ground, surrounded by a quaint wall decorated in coloured bands, wonders what can be the meaning of a building so full of suggestion; and if he be of an imaginative turn, may fall into a day-dream even while he peers through the gate that stands by the porter's lodge.

But let us pass through this gate, and so up to the entrance-hall, and we shall seem to leave behind us not only the Weavers' Garden, but most things English. The hall itself, paved with encaustic tile, leads to a flight of broad, shallow steps, beneath an arched ceiling of variegated brick and two screen arches. These steps conduct us at once to a central corridor, extending for the entire length of the building, and rising to the greatest height, of the open roof of timber with its lofty skylights. In front of us is a double stone staircase, one branch being for the old ladies, the other for the men; and immediately at the foot of the former division is the entrance to the refectory, a large handsome dining-hall, where, at two long tables, this wonderful company assemble, only the very infirm having their meals carried to the upper ward, where they are waited on by paid attendants. Separate staircases are provided for the servants of the establishment, whose rooms are in the tower above the main wards—or rather, let us say, principal apartments, for they are not so much wards as a series of twenty-two large bedrooms, linen-rooms, and two bath-rooms. The steward of the hospital, a venerable gentleman with the courteous air and speech of some seneschal of olden time, has also his own apartments, reached by a third stair, his sitting-room and office occupying a space close to the entrance. On the right of the main staircase and at the end of the corridor is the ladies' sitting-room, a fine highwindowed light and lofty place, admirably warmed, as indeed all the building is, and so furnished that at each large square table four old ladies can sit and have not only ample space for books or needlework, but on her right hand each

can open a special separate table-drawer with lock and key, wherein to keep such waifs and strays-shreds, patches, skeins, and unconsidered trifles-as children and old women like to accumulate. There is another day-room beside this, and a similar, though not quite so large an apartment is provided for the men, both rooms being furnished with sundry books and a few periodicals of the day, amongst which, it may be noted, that THE QUIVER holds an honourable place in the regard of this simple family. It must not be forgotten though that many of the old gentlemen have grown accustomed to the use of tobacco, and here in the basement is a smoking-room, quite out of the way of the ordinary sitting and dining-rooms, and not far from the laundry and drying-rooms, which form an important part of the establishment. But, hush! there is a hymn sounding yonder in the refectory; a hymn sung by voices many of which are yet fresh and clear, though the singers number more than eighty years of life, and of life that has often been hard and full of heaviness. It is the grace before meat, and the hot joints, with the fresh vegetables from their own garden, have just come up from the big kitchen by means of a lift to the serving-room. There are no servants to wait at table, and the family dinner-party is a private one, inasmuch as it is the custom here for the most active of the inmates to agree among themselves who shall be butler, or beaufetière, for each day during the week. So the dinner-time goes pleasantly and quickly, the meat, the vegetables, and the capital household beer, of which each man has a pint twice a day, and each woman half a pint, being the only articles that require serving.

The good old-fashioned family custom of everybody having his or her own tea-pot is observed here. A great gas boiler stands on one side the refectory, and a row of convenient lockers on the other; and each inmate has tea and coffee from the stores, while bread and butter are also served out for consumption according to each individual fancy, and not in rations at each meal-time. Thus those old ladies and gentlemen who have spending money, or friends to bring them some of the little luxuries that they so keenly appreciate, can add a relish to their breakfast or to the evening beer.

We will not go in while they are at dinner, for there are those here yet who "might have been gentlefolk" but for the mutability of our mortal affairs. Stay! here come the old ladies, with oldfashioned curtsies, which are more than half a bow, and not a mere vulgar "bob." There is no mistaking some of their faces. You may see their like in French pictures, or in old French towns still. Some of them with eyes from which the fire has not yet died out; with deftly-moving fingers; with a quick, springy step; with an

inherited remnant of the French moue and shrug, as they answer a gentle jest about their age and comeliness.

66

Eighty-four; and I don't know how it is, but I don't seem to see so well in the dark as I used. When I went out to see my brother-in-law, I was quite glad he came part of the way home with me."

"Turned eighty, but I can't get up-stairs as I used to do."

"You speak French, madame?"

"Pas beaucoup, monsieur ;"-this from one of the only two actual French women now in the establishment, the rest being lineal descendants only. The oldest, who is now going quietly and with a very pretty dignity out of the refectory, is ninety-four, and can not only hear a low-toned inquiry, but answers it in a soft pleasant voice. She bears the burden of years bravely, but the burden itself has perhaps been heavy; and she speaks in a mournful tone, as one looking forward to a mansion among the many-to a house not made with hands, may sometimes speak when even the grasshopper becomes a burden.

As to a young person of sixty-five or thereabout, nobody regards her as having any real business to mention such a trifling experience of life; while of the men-most of whom seem to have filed off for their pipe or newspaper-one remains finishing his dinner, for he has been on duty for the day, and is now winding up with a snack of bread-andbutter and the remainder of his mug of porter— a stoutly-built, hale, stalwart-looking gentleman, who, sitting there without his coat, which hangs on the back of a chair, might pass for a retired master mariner, or a representative of some position requiring no little energy and endurance. I fancy, for the moment, that he must be an official appointed to serve or carve, and employed on the establishment.

'Eighty-four," and one of the old weaving colony of Bethnal Green. There can be no mistake about it. Every inmate provides certificates and registers enough to make the claim undoubted; and as to the right by descent, half the people here carry it in their faces, and to the initiated, are as surely French, as they are undoubtedly weavers.

The morning here begins with family prayers, which the steward reads from a desk in the refectory, and so the day closes also. The Sunday services are in the chapel, and such a chapel! To those who remember the dim, barely-furnished room in the old building at St. Luke's, this gem of architectural taste and simple beauty at the end of the main corridor comes with no little surprise. Its beautiful carved stone corbels, mosaic floor, and charming ornamentation; its broad gallery entered immediately from the upper floor, so that the feeble and infirm may go to worship

AT THE FRENCH HOSPITAL, VICTORIA PARK GRACE BEFORE MEAT.

"ABOUT MY FATHER'S BUSINESS"-p. 366.