CAPTAIN STAUNCY REPORTS PROGRESS AT HOME.

By the side of a bright fire in that happy home sat Mary Stauncy, waiting the return of her husband. The children were settled for the night, and everything in the little sitting-room was made to wear an air of cheeriness, that would have brightened a cloudy brow had it darkened the door. But Stauncy's brow was not clouded when he stepped in lightly, and saluted his smiling wife. On the contrary, his manner was unusually lively, and, being quite himself again, having shaken off the effects of his morning potations, he laughingly said, 'The old boy was in good cue for once, Mary, and I'm a richer man than I was yesterday. He has come out handsome.'

Now, Mary Stauncy, who was a woman of a penetrating mind, and thoroughly sterling in character, had a marvellous contempt for the said Mr. Phillipson. She mistrusted and scorned him, and her dislike was the barbed arrow of a woman's aversion. She therefore replied, in a tone which showed that strong feelings were on the instant awakened, 'And not before it was time, James. He has often promised to do something; but his promises, like himself, are worthless. Here are your best years running out, and what do you get for it? Depend upon it, when you answer his purpose no longer, he'll send you adrift with as little compunction as he turned Nanny Heale out of house and home—the poor old creature!'

'Cut the painter, eh, Mary?' he replied, smiling.

'Yes—cut the painter, James, and no joke in it either. It'll be a serious thing to get older and poorer at the same time, living, as I may say, from hand to mouth, and letting time go by us until every opportunity for bettering ourselves has passed away, because your unprincipled employer is pleased to keep us off and on, promising and promising, without ever intending to perform.'

'Nonsense, Mary!' replied the captain; 'we're young enough yet, and all our spring tides are not done with. Though you think so ill of the merchant, it isn't all breath he deals in;' and, laying the fifty-pound note on the table, he added, 'Look, there's a hansel.'

The little woman coloured scarlet. Surprise, pleasure, hope, suspicion, marshalled themselves hastily in her bosom; and, as there are times when the whelming tide of the heart keeps back the faculties of thought and utterance, she remained for a few moments silent. But as the blood stole gradually from her cheeks, and a pallor all the more death-like spread over them, she gave utterance to her uppermost thought—the offspring of that intuition which is woman's surest and safest logic, and said, 'Well, James, that's a fine prize surely; but I'm certain there's roguery in it.'

'Roguery?'

'Yes, roguery, James. That covetous, dishonourable old man would as soon part with his blood as with his money, unless he had some bad scheme in his mind. It's no little would make him hand over a fifty-pound note; and, to my eyes, every letter of it spells a warning.'

'Come, come, Mary! you are too hard upon him; and really you might have been gossiping with that old croaking witch, Betty Eastman, you speak so solemnly about warning. The worst thing of the kind I know of is the warning to pack up and go over the bar the first tide.'