had in one way had in charge. She played on, while the happy little voices sang and her heart woke up to new responses. It was certainly a very peaceful, happy time.

All the Joys were present, and at the end of the evening some kind of whispering had gone on between them and Dr. Rodman before the Doctor came up to say, "Pamela, I want you to go with me for the night to Mrs. Purthven's."

Pamela was glad enough to go anywhere with her aunt, yet she had a longing to talk things over with Meg. They had grown so very near to each other during this twelvemonth that it seemed hard not to share all their small excitements and enthusiasms.

Pamela could hardly have said why, but as she and her aunt drove through the darkening streets to Mrs. Purthven's house; as they went into the hall and were greeted by that lady; as Pamela was told to go up to her room and rest a little, something seemed impending. A curious air of mystery hovered over the house and the manner of her aunt and friend, and no doubt it was the more strongly felt because Pamela for a year had lived among people of such absolute simplicity and frankness that even a justifiable reticence made itself felt.

It was not yet eight o'clock. Pamela was shown to her room, a pretty, comfortable little bower, and as she went in something curiously familiar occurred to her in the general appearance of things.

What was it?

She stood still, turning a wistful, wondering gaze about her. Then she smiled half sadly. It was only because so many of the trifles about suggested her old home and something rose up within her mightier than even regret or joy; she felt she was happier and truer than in those days. Coming to a luxuriously adapted house like this, if it did suggest old times, it did so as belonging to a world in which she had not her proper place.

As she was standing in the middle of the room looking about her, the door was softly opened and there, to her delight, was Margaret! Pamela gave a scream of delight. The two girls clasped hands a moment silently before Pamela said, "O Meg- they asked you too? I'm so glad!" Meg nodded and smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. "See here, Pamela," she said, trying

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hard to be brusque, suppose you lie down on the sofa and let me talk a little while."

"Oh, I don't need to lie down," said Pamela. "Then sit down here," said Meg, and her voice was curiously authoritative; she wheeled an easy chair towards the fire, and Pamela quite mechanically obeyed her.

Meg dropped on to the floor beside her friend and then began absent-mindedly pulling at bits of fringe on her dress. "Pamela,” she said suddenly, looking up with a very sweet though anxious light in her eyes, "if anybody had to tell you anything unexpected and perhaps a little startling, who would you like to hear it from?"

Pamela's eyes dilated into something of the old childish look of wonderment and pleasure. "From you- or aunt Lina," she said at last and with great decision.

And then it was Meg, the self-controlled, judicious Meg who gave way! All of a sudden she jumped up and clasped her arms about Pamela's waist and began to cry, and yet she contrived to speak: "O Pamela, don't you see - don't you see? It seems you really aren't poor a bit; your uncle was frightened lest money should hurt you, and he left your fortune in trust to his lawyers for you, provided you proved worthy of it after a year's hard discipline; and just to think, we never guessed! and you've done so beautifully, and you've learned what kind of things are the best to do with money, haven't you, dearest — and”.

Here Meg stopped almost hysterically and with streaming eyes looked up at Pamela's quiet face. It was a relief to see the ghost of a dimple stealing into Pamela's cheek, only Meg would have liked her to say something.

"Pamela," she said softly.

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"I hope it's all right," said the girl, with a bewildered look. "What am I to do?" "Do!" cried Meg, jumping up. Anything you like! You've two hundred thousand dollars, Pamela, all your own, and you have been taught how to use riches."

And then, as tears seemed to be the order of the day, Pamela began to cry a little. "Did aunt Lina know?" she asked.

"Not entirely," answered Meg. "She knew there were some conditions in Col. Haveris' will. Pamela," she added in a lower voice, "he left me a little bit of his money too."

A

Susan

MONG the first specimens of porcelain

brought by the Dutch from China, over two hundred years ago, were tiny tea-sets of a bluish-white ground, with landscapes and figures. in dark blue depicted upon them. In these landscapes a tree, called by the Chinese a willow, was conspicuous in the foreground; whence the style came to be known as the "Chinese Willow Pattern."

This was the fashionable tea-set in the time of George 1. and George II. The Dutch and English manufacturers imitated it, and produced not only tea-sets but dinner services of the same pattern, though very coarse compared with the genuine Chinese article. These were imported to America, where they became so common that few families of means were without a full willow-pattern table-service. Afterward as handsomer china appeared, this was voted old-fashioned and even vulgar, so that in time it almost entirely disappeared. This, however, was not until after the time of President Washington-as we are told that at some of Mrs. Washington's dinner and tea parties a service of the blue willow-pattern china. was used.

Many elderly people now living can recall how, when they were little children, they would sit at their grandmother's tables and study the blue plates, and cups and saucers, wondering "what the pictures meant❞—or inventing stories of their own to suit them. Most children obtained their first idea of China from these blue cups and plates, and must have fancied it a strange country, where trees, and birds, and houses and people were altogether different from our own. As a witty English lady wrote:

I have never been to China, and I hope I never can
Be chosen as Ambassadress to Pekin or Chusan;
But I know the kind of place it is, as well as wiser pates,
From different Works on China, illustrated by plates.
The color of the country is a kind of dirty blue,

With chaotic land and water here and there appearing through;

Interspersed with funny bridges, and paths that seem to glide

To very funny houses upon the other side.

There are frightful flowers, growing upside-down and inside

out;

Trees with caterpillars laden some with roots and some

without

and so on, describing the oddities of that country which its boastful inhabitants call "the Celestial Empire," and which they declare to be older than the moon! One of the oddities of the people, which you can behold also illustrated in these blue plates, is that the Chinese artists use no perspective and no shadow in their pictures. The distant objects are drawn as large as those in the foreground, and are represented as the vain Queen Elizabeth desired that her portrait should be painted" without shadow, as in a garden."

If, in the old times, the curious children had questioned "grandmamma" - no doubt they often did as to the meaning of the pictures on the cups and plates, the old lady would have smiled at the inquiry, and replied that the picture had no meaning. But since those days we have grown wiser and more learned in regard to China, and all pertaining to it, and now we know that the favorite willow-pattern picture is an illustration of an ancient Chinese legend or love story, which I have heard thus explained by a very intelligent Chinaman in this country.

"Here," he said, pointing to the right of the blue plate which he held in his hand, "is a lordly Mandarin's lordly country-house, in a garden by the side of a river. The house is two stories high and has a tea-pavilion in front, all of which shews the rank and wealth of the lordly Mandarin. In the garden is a tree with mulberries on it — not caterpillars - and another full of oranges — not cannon-balls-to show what a fine fruitful garden it is. All around the estate is an elegant bamboo fence, and spanning the river is a fine arched bridge. Back of the house is a little gardener's cottage, to show how poor and humble is