good thing it is when we have any one at hand to give our bad memories a little help!

Spencer Street was reached at last; but how to find the right house was a serious difficulty. It was put an end to, however, by Belle herself, who appeared at the top of the cellar stairs, with her basket full of fresh flowers, and little Bess clinging to her ragged frock. She acknowledged her new friend by a funny little dot of a curtsey. 'Do you live here?' asked Alice, and is this Bess?' 'Yes, miss,' said Belle, with another curtsey. While Bess, hearing the sweet voice, raised her large blue eyes, which always seemed to seek for something they could not find, as if to take note of the two kind faces which were bent upon her with such a look of pitying interest. 'Is your mother at home?' asked Mrs. Linton. 'Mother's dead,' was the short, sad answer. 'Then your father?'

'Father's in; he always is in now since he hurt his He's a stone-mason, father is.'

arm.

'May we go and speak to him?'

Belle replied by leading the way into the dingy cellar, where Alice's eyes, dazzled by the sudden change from the bright sunlight outside, could at first distinguish nothing. Her ears, however, told her that a gruff voice was asking' who they were, and what they wanted?'

Mrs. Linton answered gently that her daughter had, the day before, bought some of the little girl's pretty flowers, and they came to see if she had any more for sale.

The man's manner grew more civil at this, and he offered Mrs. Linton a chair, the only one the room could boast, saying, as he did so, that he was glad Belle's posies had found a market at last.'

'I see you have your arm in a sling,' said Mrs. Linton; 'have you had an accident?'

And then, in answer to her gentle, skilful questioning, the whole sad story of want and suffering was told her. How, in carrying a load of bricks his foot slipped on the ladder, and, though he fell from no great height, his arm

was broken and one knee much bruised; how he would not be taken to the infirmary, because there was no one to look after the children; how the dispensary doctor did all he could, but still the injuries mended slowly; how the stored-up savings of better days had melted gradually away; and how, at last, Belle's flowers and Will's errands were all the family had to depend upon for food, and fire, and rent, and clothes.

While Mrs. Linton was listening to this sorrowful tale, Alice and Belle were improving the acquaintance already begun.

'Wouldn't you like to wash your hands and face?' asked Alice, looking a little shyly at the ragged, little mistress of the cellar.

'Don't know,' said the child; 'haven't got no soap.' 'But you have water,' said Alice. Then, fearing lest she should seem to find fault, she changed the subject. 'Do you like reading?'

Can't read,' said Belle. 'Will can; but I never went to school since mother died.'

'Wouldn't you like to learn ?'

The grey eyes gave an odd sort of twinkle. care much; it's a deal of trouble.

'Don't

I can't anyhow.'

Alice did not know what to say to this. The idea of any one not caring to read was entirely new to her. She was just wondering how she could make Belle understand the delight of a new story, when Mrs. Linton turned to her, and asked if she were ready to go home. So, after buying some more primroses, they mounted the steps again, and were once more in daylight.

'Oh, mamma!' Alice began, as soon as they were in the street, Belle doesn't know how to read, and she can't wash her face because she has no soap!'

Mrs. Linton smiled. 'I'm so glad, Alice, that you stopped to speak to that poor child yesterday, for I think it has led to our finding a case of real distress. There will be plenty of help needed until the poor man's arm is so much better that he can work again; so, if you like,

you may try what you can do in making a warm frock for little Bess.'

Alice made no objection this time, but she had another plan in her head, and after being very silent nearly all the way home, she suddenly said:

'Oh, mamma, do you think I could teach Belle to read ?'

'I'm afraid you would find it rather difficult, dear. Besides, when could you do it?'

'Couldn't she come for an hour on Saturday afternoons? I don't think she would like to go to school. And if she couldn't read when she grows up, mamma !'‹

'Well, Alice, remember that if you begin, you must go on. You are very fond of play, you know, and how will you like to give up part of the best time for it? Remember our dear Saviour's words about counting the cost, and don't decide in a hurry.'

But Alice was steady to her purpose; and when she had at last succeeded in getting Belle to agree to be taught, she set to work with great vigour and zeal. She soon found, however, that she had undertaken a more difficult task than she expected. Belle was by no means quick, and it was hard work to make her understand the difference between one letter and another.

'No, no, Belle, that is b, not d. Don't you see that one turns this way and the other that?'

'Do they, miss?' Belle would say, as innocently as if she had not been told the same thing fifty times over. 'Dear me, letters is queer! Never saw nothing so queer before.'

And more than once Alice was tempted to give up her work in despair, especially when, on a bright Saturday afternoon, she heard the merry voices of her sisters and cousins at play, and knew she could not join them till Belle's lesson was finished. It is much easier to begin anything when it is new, than to go on with it when the novelty is over, and we are feeling tired and discouraged. But one thing kept Alice from caring about her own

K

pleasure-the thought that, in this little service of love, she was considering the poor,' and pleasing the dear Saviour who had done so much for her.

And the reward came in the end; for when, after many failures and some tears, Belle was able to spell cat, catrat, rat, she was so delighted with her own progress, that she set to work with fresh spirit, and was soon able to read very nicely.

'I read father a chapter last night,' she told her teacher one day, 'and he liked it well. He said it minded him of the time when mother was alive; and I think,' she added, in a happy whisper, 'he won't go to the "Black Bear" so much now.'

I have not time to tell you more ;-how little Bess was placed in an asylum for the blind, where she learned to employ herself usefully and happily; how Will was taken into Mr. Linton's office as errand-boy; how Belle's father in due time married again, and she herself went out to service, where, by degrees, she became a steady, clever housemaid, in whom it would have been difficult to find any trace of the ragged, dirty flower-girl of former days.

And this, by God's blessing and help, was Alice's work. Dear reader, do you think there is no way in which you can 'go and do likewise?'

STORIES OF INSECT LIFE.

CATERPILLARS.

'CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lovest in fields of light,
And where the flowers of paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut in silent ecstasy.

Yet wert thou once a worm; a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man, soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day.'

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O insect conveys to us so happy an idea of innocent pleasure and idle enjoyment as does the moth or butterfly that adorns our summer with such profusion and beauty, their varied colours gleaming in the soft, warm sunshine, as they lightly skim through the air in a thousand graceful and varied directions, or pause to rest on the delicate petals of some honeyed flower. As we thus watch them borne by radiant wings through the ocean of air, what is there

to remind us of the worm-like caterpillar so generally despised and repulsed? The one seems made for earth, the other born for heaven; and thus the butterfly escaped from the chrysalis is a fitting emblem of the soul's release from the body, the spirit of the just made perfect.

We all feel a natural repugnance to the crawling motion of the caterpillar; and though some species are very beautiful in their markings, and soft coatings of down or hair, yet they are so different in appearance to the dainty winged insects we love to chase over field and meadow, that it is difficult to believe they represent the first phase of existence through which all moths and