He was a very small boy—small even for his age, as I afterwards discovered—but his be haviour duiing tbe service was, with the excep tion of a few insignificant details, exemplary. For instance, he would turn round during tbe hymn, to which I contributed a resonant and not inharmonious bass, to ascertain, so he in formed his mother in an audible whisper, "where the nuise came from." Mareover, at certain irregular intervals, he found himself compelled to produce and count over a small handful of marbles which rattled merrily as they were reconsigned to the mystic recesses of a kuickerbocker packet. But then, as anybody who has ever been a boy himself kuows,marble? are marbles At such crises as these his mother would look at him, evidently with the intention of express ins her disapproval of these juvenile delinquen cies ; but, somehow, she never got farther than the merest elementary contraction of the eye brows as little Red Head smiled up at her iu the blissful unconsciousness of wrongdoing which is one of the happiest attributes of child hood, and slid his small hand into her black gloved one ; and really, as I have remarked be fore, bis behaviour was, one the. whole, exem plary. The couple interested me strongly. As a lonely old bachelor, without any boys—red headed or otherwise —of my own, I am obliged to seek distraction outside my own family circle, which is composed of myself, a tame jackdaw and a cat. Therefore, I am always ready to take a lively and friendly interest iu auyihing or anybody that comes under my immediate notice.
