MONKS HORTON.




'And we will all the pleasures prove,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.'--Old Ballad.


It was holiday-time, and liberties were taken such as were not
permissible, when they might have afforded a bad precedent to the
boarders. Therefore, when two afternoons later Mary Nugent,
returning from district visiting, came out into her garden behind the
house, she was not scandalised to see a pair of little black feet
under a holland skirt resting on a laurel branch, and going a few
steps more she beheld a big shady hat, and a pair of little hands
busy with a pencil and a blank book; as Ursula sat on the low wall
between the gardens, shaded by the laburnum which facilitated the
ascent on her own side.

'Oh Miss Mary! Delicious! Come up here! You don't know how
charming this is.'

She moved aside so as to leave the ascent--by an inverted flower-pot
and a laurel branch--open to her friend, thus knocking down one of
the pile of books which she had taken to the top of the wall. Miss
Nugent picked it up, 'Marie Stuart! Is this your way of studying
her?'