I cannot think these elective friendships ever really cease, though a quarrel, a misunderstanding may break them seemingly for ever. There is a spiritual oneness which refuses to divide.
In conclusion, let me add one word about the bond of union which the love of Christ makes. If that is in any friendship you need not fear its dissolution. If few girls begin their youthful friendships with such a tie, can they not, will they not strengthen their union with it when they see how it can bless and sanctify such union with friendship the most perfect we can know on earth?
(To be continued.)
THE SHEPHERD'S FAIRY.
A PASTORALE.
By DARLEY DALE, Author of "Fair Katherine," etc.
CHAPTER VI.
JACK'S SMOCK FROCK.
Twelve years had elapsed since the shepherd first found the little baby on his door-step when, one afternoon in July, Mrs. Shelley was sitting working hard at some coarse-looking needlework, on a bench just outside the house. By her side stood her two younger sons, Charlie and Willie, both of them golden-haired, red-cheeked, chubby urchins, strikingly like their father. Willie, who was now fifteen, was dressed as a sailor, for he had already been three years in the navy, and was now at home for a week's holiday, while Charlie, whom we last saw crying in his cradle, was on his way to feed the pigs, and had just deposited his pail in front of his mother to stop and look at her work.
"Is it nearly finished, mother?" asked Charlie.
The "it" was a smock made of very coarse linen, over which Mrs. Shelley and another little pair of hands had been toiling hard every afternoon for the last fortnight.
"Yes, if Fairy would only sit still and help me, we might finish it before supper. Just call her, Willie, I can't think what the child is doing; she is in her own room," replied Mrs. Shelley, who is now a comely woman of six or seven and thirty, and has apparently had but few sorrows, as not a wrinkle marks her smooth forehead, nor has a single grey hair yet made its appearance among her bright brown locks.